MIT Genius

A young man from Mongolia is bound to do extraordinary things at MIT (photo credit: Madcoverboy).

We’ve got the story of an MIT genius for you. There’s an article in “The New York Times” entitled “The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator” written by Laura Pappano that we wanted to highlight for the readers of our college admissions blog. The article’s protagonist, Battushig Myanganbayar, is an extraordinary young man who attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Think the 1991 movie “Little Boy Tate.” Yes, he’s that gifted. Battushig, who does not listen to music and has never read “Harry Potter” (note to all college applicants who foolishly write about the “Harry Potter” books in their college admissions essays), at fifteen years of age “became one of 340 students out of 150,000 to earn a perfect score in Circuits and Electronics, a sophomore-level class at M.I.T. and the first Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC — a college course filmed and broadcast free or nearly free to anyone with an Internet connection — offered by the university.”

Did we mention that Battushig Myanganbayar is from Mongolia, where roughly a third of the population is nomadic? Thought we’d throw that in for kicks. The young man dominated this MIT class and it’s not like this subject is taught in Mongolian schools (although his principal did attend MIT). Through programs like MOOC, universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can now better track down extraordinary young men and women across the globe so that they can bring them to America to further their educations. Battushig is now a student at MIT.

According to the piece in “The New York Times,” “Stuart Schmill, the dean of admissions, said Battushig’s perfect score proved that he could handle the work. Schmill also said that although M.I.T. already seeks students from around the world, many come via special programs organized by charities or international schools. (Zurgaanjin attended the United World College in Wales before applying to M.I.T.) ‘The MOOCs may well offer the opportunity for us to get more students from remote areas who haven’t been in these magnet cultures,’ Schmill said.”

So if you see teenagers roaming around the MIT campus in the future, know that programs like these may have something to do with it. These are the kinds of young men and women who truly can change our world so why shouldn’t they get the earliest possible exposure to the finest education in the world?