Growing up brilliant
Some bright children find a place where they belong – the UW
By Roberto Sanchez
Seattle Times staff reporter
Hari Shroff is a budding bioengineer, a senior at the University of Washington who’s learning to use the stuff of life to make new materials and structures.
But he’s still five years short of being able to join his friends at the bar after a long day in the labs, and UW librarians ask to see his ID when he tries to check out books.
He doesn’t mind the hassle. Just 16 years old, Shroff is the produce of the university’s Early Entrance Program, a small program for young, very bright students that has been recognized by psychologists and researchers as one of the best accelerated-education programs in the country.
The program accepts gifted students as young as 10 – and no older that 14 – who have completed the seventh grade and who can prove they have the skills and personality to survive college.
The 16 to 18 youths accepted each year first enter the Transition School, which compresses four years of high school into 30 weeks. Students are encouraged to take one or two regular classes at the UW, and they also learn how to manage time, and how to study and write at college level.
Those who make it through the transitional program can automatically enroll as full-time UW students. As long as they’re at the university, they get specialized counseling, a place on campus to hang out and a group of peers for company. There are about 60 students a year attending the UW this way, living at home or in student housing, depending on their ages and wishes.
Nancy Robinson, director of the Halbert Robinson Center for the Study of Capable Youth, looks grandmotherly in her tiny office surrounded by papers, pictures and books. To her right, by the window, she keeps a black-and-white picture of her late husband, the school’s co-founder, whose name the center bears.
The two met at Stanford University, where they were doing research on gifted children, and where “one thing led to another,” Robinson said. They got married, moved to the UW in 1969 and continued their research. In 1977, they founded the Early Entrance Program; their own daughter, Beth, was one of the first students.
Kathleen Noble, the program’s counselor and assistant director, said the program is based on research showing that precocious students lose interest in academics unless they have teachers and classes that challenge them.
“We know that very bright students, by the time they get to middle school, get turned off to learning. And it is very hard to turn on a mind that has been turned off so young,” Noble said.
“They have higher IQs and they learn faster,” said Julian Stanley, a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, who specializes in mathematically precocious youth. “They learn so fast that they sit around for weeks, while their teacher deals with the slower students. It’s a wonder any of them survive at all.”
Erin Early, 14, fits that description. Two years ago, she attended the private Overlake School in Redmond – for most students, a challenging school. Though in seventh grade, she was bright enough to take ninth grade classes. She was still bored, getting A’s in every class but gym without really spending any time on schoolwork.
Then she entered the Transition School.
Students in the class actually discussed issues on their own, even after the teacher finished a lesson. The work was tough and challenging. Graduates of the Transition School – EEPers, as they call themselves -- would pop in for a laugh at the new batch of kids, a nice break from the tough load. And having advisers like Noble, who was approachable and ready to talk about anything, was comforting, she said.
“It was fun,” said Earl, now a UW student. “In TS, I could be intellectually stimulated and be with other people that I could learn with.”
Her family also noticed the difference.
“It wasn’t just the teachers were good, and challenging. It was the students, too,” said Dick Earl, Erin’s father, a computer programmer. “And yeah, there was a lot of homework.”
A trying transition
The University of Washington is one of four universities in the United States with a formal system for accepting and guiding such young students. Others are California State University in Los Angeles, Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Massachusetts and Mary Baldwin College in Virginia.
The Center for the Study of Capable Youth is a separate institute under the umbrella of the UW’s college of arts and [s]ciences. Besides hosting the EEP and Transition School, the center directs research on gifted children, including studies of students in its programs. It is financed with grants, tuition from students in the Transition School, and state funds for basic education.
The school has a staff of five: a principal who also teaches English, a math teacher, a history teacher, a physics teacher and a counselor.
Since the kids must live near the university to be accepted, all of them come from schools in the Puget Sound area.
Tuition is $8,100 the first year, and regular UW tuition after that; financial aid is available for low-income families. Program directors try to have a balance of boys and girls, and they also try to recruit ethnic minorities, but most students are white and middle class.
Students at the Transition School are in class from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. every day, with one-hour break for lunch. They study for just four subjects: history, English, physics and math. As part of the EEP, the UW allows exemptions from other high school subjects usually required for admission.
Transition School students can expect four or more hours of homework and study after school, and it can stretch far beyond that. Erin Earl, for example, said her days started at 4:30 a.m. and often ended at 11:00 p.m. or later.
Competition for admission
Research shows that bright youths who enter college early have higher grade-point averages and are more likely than regular students to complete college and to do so on time.
That is true at the UW’s Early Entrance Program, which has graduated about 300 students since it began. About 95 percent complete college in five years, compared to 65 percent of the overall UW population. They earn a grade-point average of about 3.6, compared to 2.9 for the full student population.
About 90 percent go on to graduate or professional school.
But the program’s directors admit that their school is only good for a very small number of children who have the smarts, academic discipline and parental support to deal with a college workload. Each student is screened, and selected not just by test scores and references, but also by their own willingness to attend the school.
It’s very competitive. More than 200 students take the Washington Pre-College test annually to apply. About 80 students make it to the second cut, and only 16 to 18 get admitted – fewer than one out of 10 applicants.
Despite such careful selection, one or two students drop out of the program each year, returning to a regular middle school or high school.
“Sometimes they think that is what they want, but it isn’t really. They may not have the wherewithal to profit from it … It seldom is because they not bright enough,” Robinson said. Some also may be asked to leave, if they are disruptive or can’t keep up.
The ideal students are high achievers, with high test scores, the need for a challenge and the self-discipline to succeed. Shyness isn’t a problem, but a lack of drive is. And indeed, some of the kids who drop out turn out to have been there only because of pressure from their parents, Robinson said.
Mixed feelings
Going into the Early Entrance Program was a tough decision for Matthew Boris, 18, who is about to graduate from the UW in Latin American studies and Spanish.
Boris and his family moved to Seattle in 1994, from Omaha, Neb[raska]. Boris was 14 and had been taking college classes, so counselors put him in 10th grade instead of ninth grade when he entered Inglemoore High School. But it was still too easy, and he said he also had trouble fitting in with kids he felt were obsessed with pep rallies and their social lives.
But he also had doubts about the Transition School when his family suggested it. “I was kind of wondering, ‘What kinds of freaks are these people? There can’t be anybody normal in here.’” he said.
The UW’s program pursued him, though. It took a visit to the center, and several calls to current students, before Boris decided to join.
Looking back, he says it was tougher than he expected, though he enjoyed being able to go straight to college. But he wonders if he missed something by not going to high school, especially not having access to a larger social group.
Treating them like children
The social issue is a key one for the Transition School. While research shows that gifted children benefit from tough academics, it also shows that they are still children – and need to be around others of their age.
The UW program appreciates that. Students are not accepted and immediately thrown into a college environment where everybody else is older. They are part of a small class of people of the same age, and they grow together, the way they would in a regular middle school or high school.
The students also organize field trips (including a small faction of EEP students that goes to the shooting range regularly) and have formed their own drama club, which puts on one play a year.
The setting helps establish the tone of the program. The Center for the Study of Capable Youth is wedged behind the UW’s architecture and physics buildings, out of the way of most foot traffic.
The single classroom still has doorknobs that are chest-high, left over from the days when it housed a nursery – an ironic detail not lost on the young students. The school also has a student lounge with worn couches, posters, notice boards. It serves as home base for the graduates of Transition School, where they mingle with current students.
Students decorate the lounge with their camping pictures, posters for their drama club, and their own brand of iconoclastic art. One piece for example, is called "Bible in a Bottle." It is just that – a Gideon Bible, torn to shreds, stuffed in a bottle and put on display.
On Fridays, students from the Transition School and older graduates who are in college get together to watch videos. The tiny lounge explodes with the sugar-fueled laughter and agitated speech of 15 to 20 young kids, winding down after a week of high-pressure tests and humbling piles of homework.
“I have about 10 times the social life here as I did in high school,” said Devon Livingston-Rosanoff, 16, a graduate of the Transition School and a freshman at the UW.
Yaim cooper, 14, currently a student in the Transition School, said the routine isn’t easy, but “perfectly manageable if you guard you time and do everything wisely.”
Still, “sometimes you feel like you want to go out and play,” she said.
Such programs the exception
Most colleges struggle with the challenge of what to do with precociously gifted students. And the demand is low enough that most colleges don’t see a need for a formalized policy, or for dedicated programs.
Michigan State University, for example, had a transitional program for young and gifted students in the 1960s, but closed it when its director took a job elsewhere. When a smart, young student applies for admission now, counselors have to work out informal arrangements.
And that’s not easy, said Jim Cotter, associate director of admissions at MSU.
“We do sit down, talk with the parents and ask, ‘Is this the correct move at this time?’” Cotter said. “I don’t think there’s the case that we talk a parent out of it. We just want them to look deeper at this than surface level.”
At the University of Pittsburgh, admissions counselors will only consider young students who have at least completed the 11th grade, and they insist that the high school still graduate the student.
B.J. Orr, senior associate director of admissions at Pittsburgh, said counselors are concerned that students younger than that will not be able to fit in socially at the college.
“My gut feeling is that a lot of kids don’t have a childhood anymore,” Orr said. “All of their time is so planned and they don’t have time to stare at the ceiling, imagine, daydream.”
And in fact, Nancy Robinson agrees that accelerated programs are not for everyone. She said most bright kids will be fine in honors programs, or alternatives like Running Start, a state program that allows high-school juniors to take community-college classes at no cost.
“If they don’t show that need, that hunger to go ahead, they should take their time,”
Robinson said.
Cindy Penn, Matthew Boris’ mother, agrees. Though she has two talented younger children, they will not be going into the Early Entrance Program.
“They have seen him going through it,” Penn said. “We were very relieved when the (TS) year ended, because it needed to end. He would not do it again. It was way too difficult.”
So would she recommend the program to others?
“I would, if you know what our child is getting into,” she said. “I know that in the long run, it was good for Matthew.”
The Seattle Times, Sunday, April 4, 1999
Roberto Sanchez’s phone message number is 206-464-8522. His e-mail address is: