Ellington

A lot of people assume you’re the same age, said 15-year-old Rahul Devanarayanan of the college-aged peers in his lecture hall.

When students in his quiz section realized how young he was, the reaction was one of indifference: “‘Oh, you’re 15,’” Devanarayanan recalled them saying.

This fall marked his first full quarter at the University of Washington.

“At that point, everyone is just operating on a level of, ‘Help me get this problem done.’ They don’t really care what your age is,” said Devanarayanan, who plans to major in electrical engineering and a foreign language.

The Robinson Center for Young Scholars, located on the first floor of Guthrie Annex 2, houses the students of the Early Entrance Program (EEP) and the UW Academy, or the EEPers and Acads as they sometimes call themselves. They range in age from 12 to 17.

The late Dr. Halbert Robinson, a developmental psychology professor at the UW, established the EEP in 1977. The competitive program is open to anyone who has completed the sixth grade. Once admitted, EEPers must participate in a full year of Transition School (TS), a program designed to smooth the way from a middle school classroom to a university education.

This year, Devanarayanan was one of 16 students admitted.

For those further along in their high-school educations, the UW Academy for Young Scholars offers admittance to 35 young, academically talented students. To apply, they must have completed the 10th grade. Once accepted into the Academy, they are also directly admitted to the UW Honors Program, where they are treated like any other university student with the same credit requirements, tuition costs and financial-aid opportunities.

“We have a special agreement with the state and with the UW that our students can come in having only met a few [high-school credits],” said Sarah Childers, assistant director of the Robinson Center. “They’ll fulfill the rest of those requirements through their university coursework.”

EEPers and Acads must drop out of school to enroll in their programs, so they do not necessarily have the four years of English needed to apply to a university. But, said Childers, most students don’t have any trouble adjusting to their new classrooms.

“They’re choosing a really hard option. They want to be challenged, and they want to work hard,” Childers said of the students enrolled in the Robinson Center. “They are interested in all sorts of topics, and they like to talk about those topics with their peers.”

Sixteen-year-old Acad student Kalia Hobbs started at the UW in the fall. Hobbs completed 10th grade at Garfield High School, but said that she felt most of the curriculum was “busy work” that wasn’t relevant to her interests.

“A lot of times I felt like I was missing out on normal high-school activity because I was working on homework that was stupid,” Hobbs said. “But in college, I have more flexibility; I’m able to hang out with friends more, and be more of a young person.”

For her, college is just as much work as high school, but she doesn’t have to have her “butt in the seat” for six hours.

“Even if I have as much homework, I have more time to do other activities that I’m interested in,” Hobbs said.

Twice a week she goes to practice for the musical “Hairspray,” which she’ll be performing with Broadway Bound Children’s Theatre. College, she said, allows her to have a more “flexible lifestyle” to pursue these sorts of activities.

While Childers described the students of the Robinson Center as “academically talented,” “capable” and “highly motivated,” Devanarayanan believes that they are often just more directed than their peers.

“There has been some sort of impression that the Robinson Center is filled with paranormal geniuses, which really isn’t true,” Devanarayanan said. “I’d say it’s people who maybe are more enthusiastic about this stuff than the rest of their peers were in their junior-high environment.”

He believes he made the right choice in enrolling in the Robinson Center because, toward the end of eighth grade, Devanarayanan became bored with his schoolwork and began to “slack off.”

Childers said that “disengaging” is the risk of “keeping someone in an academic environment that’s not meeting their needs. They get really undermotivated.”

The lack of challenge Devanarayanan felt in junior high was not the only reason for his decision to apply to the EEP; it was also a desire to specialize in the areas that he was interested in, such as engineering.

“The university environment offered that kind of setting and activities that allowed me to do those things,” he said. “Because not everyone around me was as interested in the subject matter, we didn’t have as much productive discourse going on.”

A more flexible lifestyle and more academic stimulation are the benefits and advantages of college life. But time management is also a common challenge for both Hobbs and Devanarayanan.

“I’m learning how to manage my time more because, before, procrastination was never an issue,” Hobbs said.

She feels encouraged that she is “doing around the same [work] as the other people in my class. … I’m two years younger, [but] I’m not feeling behind,” Hobbs said.

Meeting friends their own age is not a problem for either student, and both insist that they aren’t missing out on high-school experiences.

“From what my friends tell me, I don’t think there is much that I’m missing out [on] that I really value,” Devanarayanan said. “I guess I miss the football games, but we have even bigger ones right here. Not much of a trade-off there [that] I’m worried about.”

When Hobbs listens to her friends talk about high school, there are some aspects that she regrets not experiencing, but for the most part, she feels that she has the best of both worlds.

“I still participate in high-school sports, and I can still go to all their dances,” she said. “Anything outside of academics that are extracurricular I can still do at my high school, or any in the district, so it’s not an issue for me. I get all the benefits of the high school without doing the busy work.”

Hobbs likes to think that she is taking control of her academics and her future. While still in her first quarter at the UW, she hopes to major in art and Spanish, and eventually go to medical school.

“I’m really enjoying it so far,” Hobbs said. “I’m looking forward to having an opportunity to [create] my own education[al] path and to just really enjoy being an undergrad at UW.”

Reach reporter Rebecca Lee at lifestyles@dailyuw.com.