This study addresses the question “what is it like to be a gifted early college entrant?” Participants were eight college graduates between the ages of 23 and 45 who matriculated to college as full-time, degree-seeking students at age 16. This was a qualitative study conducted by open-ended interview and utilized narrative inquiry as a framework for the analysis. Participant responses were coded and analyzed using constant comparative method. Coded responses were grouped into 40 subcategories which were further collapsed into 7 overarching categories that provide a framework for understanding the experience of early college entrance: life story; being exceptional; understanding exceptionality through others’ experience; transition to college, academic preparation, performance, and experience; getting involved and pursuing interests; and social-emotional awareness and agency. These categories provide a picture of the milieu in which participants made the decision to enter college early. Results of this study suggest that participants experienced a milieu of educational experiences, including academic acceleration, and embedded social-emotional contexts that increased their academic self-concept and precipitated early college entrance. Despite failing to recognize their own giftedness and experiencing academic struggle, participants successfully completed college and embarked on meaningful careers. Interpreting giftedness as asynchronous development provides a framework for these results. The results of the present study suggest that while the native cognitive ability of a gifted early entrant might be sufficient to complete college, additional social-emotional supports are needed to fully realize the academic potential of gifted students.

Early college entrance programs have existed in the United States since the 1950s, but in-depth research on academic success in these programs is lacking. Every year, early college entrance programs utilize a variety of data-gathering and candidate-screening techniques to select hundreds of students for admission into these accelerated programs. However, only a smattering of research articles has discussed the factors that predict academic success in these programs. This exploratory study investigated commonly-relied-upon admissions data points—such as high school GPA and ACT scores—and demographic information—such as sex, ethnicity, and locality—to see if any of these factors predicted academic success: namely, graduation and early college entrance program GPA. Secondary data from nearly 800 students admitted over an 11-year period to a state-supported, residential early college entrance program located at a large Southern university in the United States were utilized for this study. Logistic regression failed to yield a model that could accurately predict whether or not a student would graduate from the program. Multiple regression models showed that high school GPA and ACT scores were predictive of performance, and that factors like locality and ethnicity can have predictive power as well. However, the low variance in performance explained by the variables included in this study demonstrates that high school GPA, standardized test scores, locality, sex, and ethnicity can only tell us so much about a student's likelihood of success in an early college entrance program.

As a society, we seek to have our young people, including the gifted, be healthy and happy, and go to good schools with good teachers. Framed by Sayler's theoretical model of giftedness and thriving, this study examined psychological constructs (i.e. general self-efficacy, theories of intelligence, hope, gratitude, religiosity, disposition, and resiliency) to determine their mediating effect on personal well-being and academic success in gifted college students. The 213 subjects for this study included gifted college students from two distinct programs at the University of North Texas. One hundred twenty-two participants were students from the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS). TAMS is an early-college entrance program allowing gifted students to enter college after their sophomore year of high school. Ninety-one participants attended the UNT Honors College. Honors College students are gifted students who enter college after high school graduation. Latent transition, latent class, general linear model repeated measures, and regression analyses were used in the examination of the data. Results of the study revealed that positive disposition and hope-agency were significantly related to the development of personal well-being for gifted students during their first year of college. The ability to identify pathways to goals and the self-theory of intelligence as a fixed trait were significantly related to academic success during the first year at college. Knowledge of psychological constructs that are facilitative of the positive personal well-being and academic achievement helps parents, teachers, administrators, and counselors prepare gifted students for success in college.