Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Boarding Schools for the Highly Gifted abroad

I guess the title's a bit to generic considering this is a forum for the Gifted Children for a boarding school. Anyway, hi, I'm Yatharth. I'm 14 years old, studying in Year 9 and live in Kuwait.

I am a highly gifted child (to be specific, I have an 99.9 percentile IQ), but I feel that I am wasting away here in Kuwait. I want to get to somewhere where my talent can be used, as well as I can enjoy working on projects I want to and make use of my time. I am aiming for MIT and Stanford (but then again, almost every student in the world is), but I feel I need to make use of high school and use it as a stepping stone to better places.

I am mainly seeking a boarding school for the highly gifted, in the US or Canada (the latter of which I was a citizen before), or maybe even elsewhere. I realize that that might be a bit impractical (due to lack of citizenship right now, but which we will try to get), but we are willing to take up great costs.

Information about boarding schools, as well as how an international student could avail such great facilities would be useful. I would be much indebted for getting first-hand knowledge as right now, I am not sure of how to proceed.

To tell you a bit about myself, I am a coder at heart and have been coding for about 4 years now. From web development with HTML5, CSS, JS, AJAX, AppEngine, PHP, SQL (although I can't say I prefer the last 2; desktop development with mostly Python and a bit of C; mobile apps on Android; and even embedded programming on an Arduino; I have tried to pursue that passion as far as I could. Sadly, there aren't many opportunities here.

I'm a member of our local GDG (most active in the Middle East!) and our team in StartUp Weekend landed an honorable mention and was the only team to have a fully functioning prototype. I have also seeked a leading entrepreneur in Kuwait and interned under him for a while.

Also, I participated in Google Code-In this year, but b'coz I found out late, I only managed to finish about 5-6 tasks. I'm also a member of MENSA (as I have an IQ of 155 as per the WISC-IV test). For anything else bout' me, see my About.me page.

I am sorry for the long read, but I do hope this will be srsy considered. I hope this doesn't seem to immature or something. 10x, and looking forward to yoru replies

I have tried researching a lot' but as a lot of people have woed before, Google only turns up advice and experiences and not concrete information.

I would really appreciate a reply and information on the same. I want to aim for greater things, and the only way I'm going to be able to do that is by getting out of a closed place and entering a conducive environment. Please help me in pursuing my dream.

Sincerely,
Yatharth

Have you looked at whether Davidson will accept boarders?

I thought Davidson had a residential program, but I don't see it on the website. The Stanford Online High School might also be a good option-- I have heard Stanford has a generous financial aid program, if needed.

What about one of the early colleges like Simons Rock?

I looked at the Simon's Rock website recently. They grant Associate's degrees, not Bachelor's. The school is very expensive (around $47K annually for day students and $60K for boarding students). It's a combined high school and junior college and is, IMO, a very pricey way to get an A.A. That's a lot of extra money: you'd end up paying for six years of college instead of four. Ouch!

We're hoping to sign up our eldest for a dual enrollment program called Middle College next year. He will get a free A.A. that way.

You might try searching in the "high school" and "college" sections of the boards here-- I know that there are boarding schools which are top notch and cater to elite college-bound students.

Whether they cater to HG+ students is another matter-- but there are members here (past and semi-present) who have gone the boarding school route with their children. Grinity comes to mind.

Take a look at the website college confidential. I believe they have a section on boarding schools in the United States. Then instead of asking a group with mostly second or third-hand knowledge I'd suggest calling the admissions offices of a handful of schools and asking questions like a consumer...what can they do for you. They will be expensive. Perhaps you might consider United World College in a couple of years.

I think reading/searching college confidential is a good idea. Re: the expense, I know many of the top boarding schools give scholarships- we have a niece who just started at Phillips Exeter with much of the cost paid for through a scholarship. While not described as a school "for highly gifted pupils" specifically, I suspect you would find peers academically at such a school.