Whereas if someone was Ramanujan-level, their raw talent would be so apparent they wouldn't have this issue and would clearly stand out.
It is not enough to stand out in the current system.
The parent was saying selecting the 50 kids who can handle it is a much better approach than just taking the highest overall grades.
The average A's across the board high school student can't handle second year college maths. Yet they will be placed ahead of the observably better at math kids.
Imagine if jobs worked like this - "Yes, we know you are a great developer but you don't really understand economics. Sorry".
Being well-rounded and having exposure to a bunch of topics is valuable to an extent. However, in my experience most of the people making a real difference in the workplace and academia are not particularly well rounded.
Thankfully in tech there are alternative pathways. However, for many professions there aren't and these high performers are simply excluded to societies detriment.
You can only progress so much in a field of expertise before hitting diminishing return.
At some point it makes sense to broaden your knowledge and skillset.
I suppose how long you can progress for and how far you can progress depends somewhat on the breadth and depth of the field of expertise.
Many fields of expertise are so broad and deep that they have their own sub-fields just to make them manageable.
So you would probably be in a sub-field and then broaden your knowledge and skill-set in a related sub-field of the overall field that you are well suited to.
I'm betting it's likely you can see how your own particular field, as you are on HN, replicates this pattern.
What I'm saying is in some hypothetical system which places a great emphasis on specialization, people who are a few years ahead of curriculum are a dime a dozen and will not stand out. There were 50 kids in my high school, so how many is that nationwide?
Particularly in math, it is straightforward for an exceptional talent to stand out. Competitive math is a clear pathway/credential. If someone is not able to achieve meaningful results then it's probably just the case that they aren't as talented as they believe
> Imagine if jobs worked like this - "Yes, we know you are a great developer but you don't really understand economics. Sorry".
There are plenty of software devs who are not getting hired to the potential of their raw development skills because they cannot communicate or collaborate productively. There are also plenty of software devs who are not getting hired to the potential of their raw development skills because they don't have as much domain knowledge as other devs.
I'm not sure what you mean.
High school has a much lower, but broader, bar.
The number who can handle second year college math are a small fraction of those who can get straight A's at high school.
> There are plenty of software devs who are not getting hired to the potential of their raw development skills because they cannot communicate or collaborate productively.
These are behavioural issues and not knowledge issues. We do not address these kinds of issues at high school at all.
Getting an A in English doesn't prepare you in any way to be a team player.
In my ~15 year career the only people I've seen not hired because of a knowledge gap in this space have been non-native speakers.
This is exactly the route to exploitation by MBA managers.
Great developer, loyal, doesn't understand the need to change companies to get paid a competitive salary. Perfect hire.
The person who doesn't understand economics pays the price themselves.
But he ignored all subjects besides math and lost his scholarship within a year. He later enrolled in another university, this time in Madras (now Chennai), the provincial capital some 250 kilometers north. Again he flunked out.
Maybe it would be different now?
