Do you have any evidence to back this up? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity
It can be really hard to judge these situations without getting the person in a 1:1 interview. Some times you meet someone with an extraordinary high school claim who can talk your ear off with impressive detail and deep understanding. Other times you start talking to someone and realize they don’t even understand their own topic beyond surface level understanding necessary for talking to a newspaper journalist.
With a claim like this, I’d be looking for interviews or online discussions. Usually the young people who are actually accomplishing amazing things are super excited to talk to the world about it. If anyone can find this person engaging in online forums or posting about progress on the build up, that lend a lot of weight to the claim.
Evidence for this claim?
> For some odd reason, the comments on this post are full of bitter people who cannot possibly fathom that brilliant young people not only exist, but also achieve amazing things on their own merits.
As opposed to you, who's up and down the thread making unsubstantiated claims and engaging in emotional manipulation to try to discredit (without evidence, I might add) the idea that there's any cheating or subversion going on whatsoever.
The people you're responding to are making far better points than you are.
This is the standard for getting into an elite school. Just getting good grades and generic "activities" hasn't cut it for twenty years or more.
They live in a completely different world from the rest of us and they hate us for it.