Gifted teens leap from eighth-grade to college

Jackie Robson, 14, and 66 other gifted teens started their college careers this fall without spending a day in high school as part of a Mary Baldwin College program that allows bright teens a chance to take advanced classes and live in a supervised dorm. "The standard stereotype is, [if] you don't go to the prom, you're scarred for life and all sorts of terrible things happen," said Nicholas Colangelo, director of a University of Iowa center for gifted and talented education development. "For some kids, going to the prom is not all that important." The Washington Post