Wow... all I can say is that you must have a pretty poor opinion of Davidson, and their mission and accomplishments for gifted kids. My kid would say that her weeks spent at Davidson THINK was the high point of her high school experience so far, and in fact will say in one of her essays that her fondest hope is to find a similar intensive environment for college. DYS is sort of an aside to that, but no way would she consider leaving it off. She is proud of her DYS status and considers her THINK (and her CTY Cogito experience, where she was a forum moderator) to be critical experiences in her life.
And no one is saying that kids ought to leave off information on what they have done in addition to that. Most of these kids are very accomplished, and this will be just one item in a list of honors, awards, positions held, and other accomplishments. This is our second trip through the college application process, and there is room for as many activities, accomplishments, etc. as you want to list. Honestly, by the time they are seniors, most DYS kids will have enough material for a very robust and excellent application without the DYS reference. But there is NOTHING wrong with listing it.
