IMSA was an amazing place. There are so many smart people with so much motivation and it feels like anything is possible there. There is a dark side, though, not often mentioned publicly. Mental health issues are quite common, as could be expected when you put 14-18 year olds in a highly stressful, high-pressure environment, and people generally aren't very physically healthy, either (4.5 hours of sleep a night is common). I had some of my best times and worst times at IMSA.
IMSA is indeed a great school. (I went to high school at another well-regarded school in Illinois, and saw quite a bit of IMSA folks deep into the statewide competitions for math team, quiz bowl, debate, etc etc.) I avoided going to it for exactly the reason you mentioned, with the worry that that would be exacerbated by social isolation caused by being away from my family.
I imagine many folks find it a wonderful place to be.
Mental and Social development is a huge thing to consider here (for all you parents considering your kids for a school like this). You're introduced to college level independence at a ridiculously young age (don't forget the shmen...) and while the academics is top notch, campus life can be challenging to anyone at that age, even if you get to go home on weekends. That said, you'll likely make some pretty remarkable friends for life there...
The reason you see so many entrepreneurs come out of IMSA is that the students realize they can learn anything. You see the guy across from you ace a test or finish an assignment faster than you thought was possible. You know you are as good as your peers so you push yourself to reach that level.
Once you accomplish everything the school gives you, you want more. You think of new ideas and no longer constrain yourself to what is given to you. This is just one dynamic that happens here. A lot happens when you tell the most driven and brightest to "advance the human condition".
This is something that I'm uniquely qualified to comment on.
I am an IMSA alum who was by and large, a below average IMSA student during my first two years. However, I learned a lot just by being exposed to my very smart classmates. Eventually, in my senior year I matured and started to work harder and got good grades. Had I stayed at my original high school I would have skated through at the top of my classes without much adversity. Then, based on the average college dropout rate of students from my original high school, I would have faced adversity in college and not know what to do. IMSA is a big part of why I am where I am today.
This rings true. Many of us start out with very limiting notions of what's possible, and there's nothing like surrounding yourself with bright people to expand the envelope of what seems to be possible.
I attended a school very similar school to IMSA in the early 90's (the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science), and it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me at that age. I had a pen pal at IMSA who, like me, was sys-admining the school's UNIX server, so it was fun to trade notes. I had plenty of other experiences later in life that expanded my notion of the possible, but attending that school certainly got me on the right path.
IMSA sounds like a great school, and I've always been a bit jealous of the alumnus I've met from there. But I don't know how much we can learn from this model. If you take 650 of the brightest and most motivated students and put them in one place, you're going to get incredible results regardless of the teaching methods. The real challenge is achieiving comparable gains with average or below-average students.
That's an interesting question. Is it even worth the effort to try to achieve academic gains in below-average students? What's the typical improvement we should expect there? For that matter, do special schools like IMSA achieve any gains in their students, or do they merely select and observe them?
I'd flip that question around: can we afford not to?
The consequences of a failing education system are underemployment, unemployment, antisocial behavior, civil unrest, and criminal activity. Even worse, the impact is felt across generations, as children born to parents the system has failed get less enrichment at home than children born to well-educated parents. Case in point, the US's massive educational achievement gap and world-leading incarceration rate.
The word meritocracy was coined [1] to describe a system where resources are lavished on those who have proven their worth. Like the originator of the term, I severely doubt our ability to actually measure intellect/merit/achievement decoupled from unearned advantage and luck.
I'd argue that we should be doing a lot less for the gifted. They'll turn out fine with guidance and resources. If we actually invested the time and resources into the most at risk, we might actually be able to get them up to speed, rather than socially promoting them and kicking them from school to school. Furthermore, I'd posit that an education should be considered a human right, and a bar by which we measure our achievement as a country.
I 100% agree with you. I taught high school in Baltimore's public schools. Some of my brightest kids were some of my worst performing, most challenging students to deal with. I honestly believe some of them underperformed because they could perceive what a sham the system was.
But in my original comment, I was using "gifted" in the more traditional sense of "high performing" or "high testing", which doesn't necessarily correspond with brilliance. A big criticism I have of the gifted track is that it misses out on a lot of students who are capable of doing accelerated work.
That's sort of what I'm getting at. Perhaps the answer is to sort the students out into many more strata, instead of just the two we have, which are currently gifted programs and everybody else, including the basket cases. One of the biggest advantages of a selective school is no time is spent on classroom discipline. But we only have that for 1% of the students, while the other 4% of the top 5% are sitting around in the same class as the bottom 5% kids.
The schools systems I have experience with do have gifted/normal/remdial tracks, and then various levels of special ed services. I agree that it's not enough. And especially so because there was never anything "remedial" about the remedial track. It was basically synonymous for permanently behind.
I taught math in Baltimore, and on the pretest I gave my students at the beginning of 9th grade, my students tested anywhere from 2nd grade to 9th grade in terms of current math skills, all bundled together in one room. On the low end of that scale, many students had been socially promoted to keep them with their age group.
What really gets me is that across the city, there are plenty of students who get delayed a year in their education, for a variety of reasons. Now we should be attacking those underlying issues, but that aside, it seems to me like we could much more proactive about getting those students truly focused remedial services, to either get them back on track or to at least maintain parallel pacing with their peers so that they get to the same endpoint, even if it's a year later.
We're rather fixated as a nation on the K-12 concept, rigidly linked with age, and with all subjects progressing in lockstep. I think we'd have much better outcomes with a more flexible system that recognize that a person's academic development doesn't scale so cleanly. I think even in a more flexible framework, we've got more than enough students to still take advantage of the economies of scale of systematic education.
They do have schools for at risk kids. Military schools for instance.
While I don't disagree we should do more for at risk kids, not allowing the brightest kids the best possible opportunity in an environment free from "at risk kids" hurts us all in loss of societies potential productivity.
Hey look, a rare opportunity to complain about my home state on HN on two consecutive days! There is a similar school in Oklahoma called the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics. The legislature founded the school in 1990 and has been systematically trying to defund it ever since[1].
IMSA and OSSM were founded around the same time, are of similar size, history, and philosophy. They are also both members of amazingly-named National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology. If you're looking for a school like this in your area, you should start there[2].
Missouri also has a MASMC, which I believe was copied from the Illinois model.
It was a fine schooling model, significantly better than my public school experience. Some students did have emotional trouble with moving away from home at fifteen.
This is an old article and I feel like it fails to shine light on some of the issues with this system. As a recent graduate of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy I have seen that in recent years, much of the innovative sprit and lust for learning has shrunk. With a model like IMSA's there tends to be an ever increasing amount of bureaucracy. I have heard teachers mention grade quota’s, dealt with an over zealous marketing team who clamped down on student creativity, and the general Silicon Valley “fluff“ that I know plenty of us disliked. However, that being said, the people I met there were awesome. The rigor the school applied on us made us better in the long run, even if it did injure some of our GPA’s. Overall, you go to IMSA for the environment and for the like minded audience over the strict and stubborn academics.
Going to troll a little. At my high school, IMSA was known as just as IA:
"The Math Team at Naperville North ...and won ten consecutive Math Team state championships (1998–2007). ... The WYSE team won the state championship from 1999 to 2005, 2007 to 2009, 2012, and 2013."[1]
=P
IMSA and other high schools in the area were pretty close, as you'd apply to IMSA after doing a year at the other high schools in the area.
Great school! I grew up about a 20 minute drive from there, and know a number of alums, including one of my best friends. They tend to be very ambitious, independent, and resourceful people. It's probably not a scalable model, without retooling the pipeline that feeds high school. Most American students aren't trained for the level of independence the school offers at a relatively young age. Heck, most American students aren't prepared for that level of independence by the time they hit university age.
These schools are all over the place! I graduated from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts. Math and science schools are truly fantastic places for advanced high school students to get a quality education.
I have to admit, I never expected to see my old HS come up on HN for some reason (though I'm still not used to the and the Arts, I went when it was still just the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences.
Arkansas alum here too! Still some of my fondest years!
I think schools like this are _especially_ useful in rural/poor states like our own, where cultural and educational norms are a bit behind. Imagine going from a school where the highest level of math is trig and there are no comp sci courses to one where you can take differential equations, astrophysics, or robotics.
For me personally, it was validating to find a like-minded community where nerdiness is a virtue instead of a scourge.
I also went to lsmsa and had a great experience. Can't really say enough good things about it; it was such an amazing atmosphere compared to the public high school I attended before.
Hey Arjun this is Irvin, Chacko's friend from UT, cool seeing your comment here. To be somewhat on topic :-) I went to LSMSA the Louisiana equivalent and am also appreciative of the school and the community it created. It definitely introduced me to computer science much earlier than I would have otherwise...
Are you older than me? I was class of '09 and already the kids who lived closer by went home on a fair number of weekends. I've heard the trend has gotten even more pronounced over time.
IMSA was an amazing place. There are so many smart people with so much motivation and it feels like anything is possible there. There is a dark side, though, not often mentioned publicly. Mental health issues are quite common, as could be expected when you put 14-18 year olds in a highly stressful, high-pressure environment, and people generally aren't very physically healthy, either (4.5 hours of sleep a night is common). I had some of my best times and worst times at IMSA.