Eight Year Old Physics Student Admitted to College

paris writes to tell us that The Korea Herald is running a story about Song Yoo-guen, the youngest university student that Korea has ever seen. At eight years old Song is already talking about building flying cars and defying Newton's law of gravity while others his age are attending the first grade. He completed his elementary, junior-high, and high school curricula in just nine months, something that usually takes 12 years, and has been admitted as a freshman to the physics department of Inha University.

Comments

flying cars?

[cryptoz]

I thought *all* eight year olds talked about building flying cars? Seriously, I know I did! I swore I'd never have to learn to drive since by the time I was old enough, we wouldn't even have cars anymore. So much for that. And poor, poor child. Pretty soon I bed he'd give anything to be "normal".

That's a really intersting question

[SuperKendall]

I wonder myself from time to time - what happens to these people you hear of accellerating through school like this? It seems like they must be capabile of some incredible things... do they just end up in some really esoteric sidetrack of acadamia? Are there any books or studies detailing what has happened to past kids like this?

Re:Not so fast..

[RITMaloney]

but will he not be lacking a lot of "street smarts?"

You're right. He'll surely need to learn how to shuck and jive if he's ever going to make it on the mean streets. Hopefuly he takes time to play Grand Theft Auto.

Hmmmm

[Jesus IS the Devil]

Ok every once in a while we would hear about these child prodigies that accomplish a lot while they're still young. Rather than put them down so quickly to salvage your own egos, wouldn't it be better to ask for a study to see what happens when they actually grow up?

Do these kids just max out at age 10 and eventually are equalled or even surpassed by their peers later on down the road? How are they when they are say 25, 30, 40?

Now that is what I really want to know. The final form of the adult.

Re:Annoying

[arvindn]

I'm from India, and we have kids doing this a lot back there, especially in math. I once talked to a math professor who's met some of these kids and who actually knows what he's talking about, and he says most of the time they are not even remotely qualified to be enter university, even though they might be somewhat precocious. Usually the parents make the kid do it because they are publicity whores, and the university plays along for the same reason.

Re:Lacking

[yfkar]

It seems to be the nature's law that if you're really a genius in some aspect, you must suck at something else.

How did his parents raise him?

[brian0918]

Did they follow the same methods that produced the genius of William James Sidis? (similar childhood, IQ estimated between 250 and 300)

Poor kid

[Jessta]

The poor kid is not going to have much contact with other kids his age. I'm guessing he's going to grow up a bit anti-social and with a lack of understanding of general social rules and rituals.
- Jesse McNelis

Where are the older ones?

[p0]

From time to time we hear about such brilliant minds. But what happens when they grow up? Was anyone from here a child prodigy?

Re:Where are the older ones?

[ajna]

From time to time we hear about such brilliant minds. But what happens when they grow up? Was anyone from here a child prodigy?

I was almost a child prodigy, but I decided to be "normal".

Say what? Thanks to good performances on the SAT at age 10 and 11, in both 7th and 8th grade (age 11, 12 -- I'd already skipped) I had the choice to continue with the typical schooling path or to jump directly to classes at the University of Washington. The Early Entrance Program is still around if you want to read about it, and has a year of transition, essentially to finish up the loose ends that high school would have tied up.

However, as other posters have picked up, this transition program doesn't magically make kids grow up, especially socially. At some level back then even I knew that being the "cute little kid" in class, having the girls pet my hair and go back to their own, completely incomprehensible lives, would not be what I wanted. For better or worse, I wanted to be normal.

So I went to high school, by choice. I was still always somewhat the odd one out due to being in different classes, but probably not more so than the average Slashdot reader. I was a "normal nerd" if you will. Playing sports, music, and generally learning how to be a social animal were where the true benefit of high school.

Skip forward several years and the interesting bit is that the things that I value most in my life these days _aren't_ what I displayed precocious abilities in. In particular music wouldn't have been such a large part of my life were it not for my experiences in the "normal" schooling system.

It is also true that many pursuits in life, such as my chosen path, require a level of social/emotional/personal stability and maturity that young kids simply don't have. I'm 24 now, and a second year medical student instead of the math post-doc I might have been had I chosen differently, and medicine is one of those areas where being young would have worked against me. Because of all this I feel that I made the right choice way back when.

Re:happy for him

[XchristX]

The last time such a thing happened, it turned out to be a fraud. The fact of the matter is that physics is not like pure math. Raw intelligence is not the only requirement, but knowledge, research background and experience count for more. Plenty of famous physicists with only slightly above average IQ's. This bloke's in for a tough time if he thinks he'll be able to get away with it.

Re:ah well

[HappyEngineer]

I suppose so, but I suspect he'd be even lower on the befriend list of other people his own age. Middle school and highschool is pretty socially disfunctional as it is (at least in the US). Being a smart guy doesn't get you much in that environment. In college being a smart guy may be rewarded.

Your question has been studied

[cerebis]

Your question is a good once and it has been studied. I believe that current science believes that the brain doesn't completely mature until around 20 years of age. In that intervening time, between birth and full maturity, there is a potential for one brain to develop more quickly in certain aspects than the average, and consequently produce very high IQ children. However, as everyone's brain reaches maturity, that gap tends to narrow dramatically. That's not an argument that smart kids don't become smart adults, just that extraordinarily intelligent kids don't seem to maintain that same gap on the majority in adulthood.

Basically, people make the mistake of treating the brain's functional power as a linear equation (something like),

P(t) = m t + Po.

Where the implicit assumption is that the scalar factor m is equal between all people, and the initial condition Po is the soul source of variation in function. So for a kid identified as very smart (a high Po), we reach the false conclusion that following this relationship above, the freakish gap in funciton will remain constant. We ignore that m (which for simplicity's sake I am treating as a simple scalar) is just as significant and allows for what we observe in nature.

Re:OK I give up

[SnowZero]

and a middling Korean university

Prodigies usually attend universities near home, so that they can still live with their family. The quality of the school is secondary, as they can always move on later if they outgrow it. My university won't even let students live on campus below a certain age, and they probably aren't socially ready for it anyway. One of my best friends from undergrad started taking classes at 12 and entered as a freshman at 14. She wasn't allowed to live on campus until sophomore year.

In a way, I'm glad to not be in that category, as its quite difficult for such students. Their intelligence at school is well advanced of their social development, and nobody treats them normally anyway. Our society is set up so that things only line up for regular people.