The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator

Original Article from the New York Times

This article is a bit old but have you heard of the boy genius from Ulan Bator?

I love stories like this.

Battushig Myanganbayar, then 15 years old from Mongolia, took an online electronic circuits course at MIT and got a perfect score.

There are so many gems in this story here are a couple of my favorites:

Battushig persuaded his parents to upgrade the Internet speed at their home from 1 megabit per second to 3 (the average in the United States is 8.6) to make it easier to watch the lectures.

The course is difficult in any setting — M.I.T. sophomores often pull all-nighters — and the Mongolian students were taking it in a second language. Battushig, however, thrived. “I can’t compare it to a regular class,” he said. “I had never done that kind of thing before. It was really a watershed moment for me.” To help his classmates, he made videos in Mongolian that offered pointers and explanations of difficult concepts and posted them on YouTube.

Prime example of talent being distributed equally, but opportunity is not.

I wonder how many other Battushigs are out there…