I suppose learning to play the piano solely for love of music is out of the question?

For most of us who never became concert pianists or even made it to mediocre, what was the point of learning to play the piano as a child? The boring scales, the silly little tunes, the hours of practice until we finally learned a song anyone recognized? The simple answer is “not much.” But the more profound truth is that we were learning a metaskill.

From: Why you should take the time to master a single skill

It’s just that when you are a tween or teenager, a person feels like everything conversation points to them. These youngsters have already demonstrated that they have the maturity to rise above all of this silliness. But still, I think we owe them respect by removing our conversation from a thread opened to celebrate thier acheivement.

Moderators?

My objection is to desis basking in reflected glory when it’s clearly an individual thing. If desis brag about such matters, it’s equally valid to point out their lack of success in other endeavors. I don’t in any way want to detract from individual accomplishment.

That makes your ignorance all the more absurd. India’s produced eight IMO gold medalists in two and half decades and yet you think it’s some JEE style exam.

Provide just one compelling reason why you think the Putnam and IMO are within the reach of the top 10,000 rankers at the JEE, and we’ll know you aren’t talking out of your a$$.

It’s not my intention to put Desis down – I look at these as instances of individual achievement and see no reason to give credit to anyone other than the individual, and his/her immediate support system.

my_dog_jagat: So by your definition it’s impossible for anyone to achieve anything unless they’re from an under-privileged background. Sweet!

I feel like everyone here has been spending a lot of time reading “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. It seems like it would be nice for people to have a debate around that book, instead of challenging or belittling these youngersters accomplishments. Moderators, do these kids really need this? It’s a tough world out there. They don’t need any sh* from us.

umm… facts matter, especially when you throw in claims of affirmative action. your opinions are unsupported by the actual fact that hundreds of thousands of people in india have similar goals (about 500000 wrote the jee in 2010) and comparable backgrounds, but do not have a similar level of achievement. creating strawmen of extreme deprivation or other such weird thought experiments does not detract from his credentials. nobody is comparing him with an orphan or saying that he is better than women. this is like denigrating achievements of americans (or indians) because there are people in africa who go without food.

You may or may not know his family personally, it has no bearing on how I see these things. There are many ways to define affirmative action. Giving seats to under-represented minorities who would otherwise not make the cut is just one way. And no Mr. B would have made the cut. But let us do this thought experiment. What if he had been born an orphan, what if he had not got help (substantial help perhaps) from his IIT parents. What if he had not been raised in an environment where going to IIT and MIT is a badge of accomplishment. What if he had been a she etc… etc… I know from personal experience that all this makes a big difference. If Jyotsana had mentioned something else (other than the facts he did –IIT/MIT etc…) I might actually have been impressed.