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Abstract

We report on a qualitative study about the presence and role of insider knowledge in the lives of talented adolescents. Several themes emerged from the interviews: career aspirations of the participants; sources of knowledge about colleges and choosing a college; sources of knowledge about STEM careers; anticipated challenges; required skill sets; and types of support needed to address challenges. Participants received college guidance from school counselors and used the Internet as a primary source for STEM-related activities and information. Participants formed their ideas on what life is like for a STEM professional based on people they knew, TV shows, and social media, with more realistic notions acquired by students with a family member in STEM. Commonly experienced and anticipated challenges were competition in school and in college admissions. Time management was identified as a necessary skill, and the most frequently cited support needed was guidance with respect to career paths.

Keywords

insider knowledge STEM interests talent development

Introduction

For many decades, cognitive ability was considered the most important contributor to outstanding academic achievement (e.g., Terman, 1922). Indeed, the Genetic Studies of Genius—that is, Terman’s (1925, 1954a, 1954b, 1955; Terman & Oden, 1947, 1959) longitudinal study of gifted children—were intended to “throw light upon genius which aborts or deteriorates, as well as upon that which fulfils its promise” (Terman, 1922, p. 311). Cognitive ability or intelligence is still one of the most important predictors of functioning in both the academic and vocational domains (Neisser et al., 1996; Nisbett et al., 2012; Wai et al., 2024), and the Study for Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), a contemporary longitudinal study, has also provided considerable support for the contributions of domain-specific cognitive abilities (e.g., Lubinski, 2016), a finding that has been replicated beyond SMPY (see Makel et al., 2016).

However, contemporary researchers have begun to acknowledge the importance of other factors—both personal and environmental—that contribute to the translation of the potential that high cognitive ability in children signals to outstanding achievements in adulthood (e.g., Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, & Worrell, 2019). In many cases, these other factors have been implicated in studies of gifted children, but the historically singular focus on general cognitive ability has resulted in them being overlooked (Worrell, 2009). For example, as Terman (1922) noted a century ago, some children with high IQs lived up to their potential, whereas others did not. Terman’s concern about the flowering or withering of genius over time is an acknowledgment that cognitive ability alone does not determine adult outcomes (Worrell, 2009). Accordingly, more recent research has pointed to contextual variables that contribute to subsequent exceptional achievement, including socioeconomic inequality and access to educational opportunities (Ambrose, 2013; Olszewski-Kubilius & Corwith, 2018; Worrell et al., 2020). Although general cognitive ability or IQ is the most generalizable predictor of achievement and vocational outcomes (Neisser et al., 1996; Nisbett et al., 2012), it is important to study the other factors that contribute to outstanding achievement, such as domain-specific cognitive abilities (Wai et al., 2024) and psychosocial factors.

In this paper, we focus on the concept of insider knowledge, a potential contributor to outstanding performance that has not been widely studied within talent development research (Steed et al., 2021). We begin with a description of the talent development megamodel (TDMM), which acknowledges multiple contributors to outstanding adult performance, including insider knowledge (Subotnik et al., 2019b; Terman, 1922; Subotnik et al., 2011, 2019b). We then define insider knowledge and briefly summarize the research on this construct and related constructs, before reporting on the results of a study of insider knowledge in a sample of academically talented youth.

The Talent Development Megamodel

The TDMM (Subotnik et al., 2011, 2018) posits that outstanding achievement in adulthood is the result of a domain-specific talent development process that starts with potential, which can develop into competence, expertise, and, for some, eminence in adulthood. Important factors in this process include (a) general cognitive ability; (b) domain-specific cognitive abilities; (c) opportunities provided to develop competencies and skills in a domain; (d) an individual’s decision to take advantage of the opportunities provided; (e) a host of psychosocial and high performance factors, such as persistence, motivation, and strategic risk-taking; and (f) insider knowledge, the focus of this paper. As noted above, general cognitive ability or IQ is a general factor that contributes to individuals’ capacity to learn and is generally predictive of performance across multiple domains. However, domain-specific abilities play a role in determining specific achievement outcomes (Bernstein et al., 2019). For example, an individual with substantial musicality (Müllensiefen et al., 2022) may have a different trajectory than an individual with a mathematical cast of mind (Leikin, 2019).

Both general and domain-specific abilities are malleable and can be developed with practice, effort, and opportunity. The level of both general and domain-specific abilities will not matter if an individual does not get the opportunity to translate the abilities into actual competencies, a major focus of education. In elementary school, students learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and they practice number sense as they progress through the grade levels. These competencies set them up to learn algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus in secondary school. A student with substantial mathematical ability who drops out of high school in Grade 10 and goes into the workforce will miss out on the opportunity to take higher level mathematics courses and derail their chances of a career with a heavy mathematical focus. If this same student continued to attend school, but was irregular in attendance and homework completion, their failure to take advantage of the educational opportunities that their school provided could also derail a potential career in mathematics. Alternatively, students with similar potential who have engaged deeply in their schoolwork but have less or more effective teachers in a subject area may also end up diverging in their career paths due to the quality of the education that they receive. Research indicates that students who receive a bigger “dose” of academic training achieve better outcomes (Wai et al., 2010).

Another factor that is an important contributor to talent development are psychosocial skills, such as effort. Even if one does not accept Ericsson et al.’s (1993) contention that 10,000 hours are required to develop expertise, it is clear that self-regulation is essential to translate potential and lessons from teachers, coaches, and trainers into developed competencies and skill sets (Floris et al., 2024; Grolnick et al., 2024). Motivation constructs and other psychosocial and high-performance factors have robust relationships with achievement outcomes in academic and nonacademic domains (e.g., Dixson, 2022; Meissel & Rubie-Davies, 2016; Taylor et al., 2014). The last factor, insider knowledge, is discussed in the next section.

Insider Knowledge

Insider knowledge has been defined as “critical information about how to achieve success in a domain that is not available to the general public but is relatively well-known to individuals within the domain and to those who have access to those individuals” (Subotnik et al., 2023, p. 85). Every domain has information that the participants in the field are aware of. Parents who are academics can provide valuable insights into the college application process and navigating the systems once admitted. Similarly, parents who are professional performers can guide their children in choosing agents. Insider knowledge is related to several other constructs, including tacit knowledge (MacLeod et al., 2009), the hidden curriculum (Mahood, 2011), and the shadow curriculum (Subotnik et al., 2023), and all these constructs refer to knowledge that is known by some and not by others.

The research base on insider knowledge is quite limited. Using “insider knowledge” as a keyword in a search of the PsycINFO and ERIC databases yielded only four articles, only one of which was related to talent development. In one study, Subotnik et al. (2010) described the Catalyst Program, which partnered a handful of talented high school students with two graduate students, or postdoctoral scholars, and an eminent scholar. The high school students reported that the program helped them understand “the reality of a career of a research scientist” (Subotnik et al., 2010, p. 729), which allowed them to determine if the career was a good match for them. In another study on the influences of social agents, Luo et al. (2022) reported that having educated parents and STEM teachers as mentors led to higher levels of STEM degree completion. However, these researchers did not specifically ask questions about insider knowledge.

In the most recent article on insider knowledge and talent development, Subotnik et al. (2023) reported interviewing “14 highly accomplished American scientists” with the goal of ascertaining “if insider knowledge was something that they considered important and . . . if they felt that insider knowledge had played a role in their educational and career trajectories” (p. 87). These authors reported that “insider knowledge and other career-based advice was not substantial during the precollegiate years, with two exceptions—if you had a family STEM connection or if you participated in an out-of-school research project” (Subotnik et al., 2023, p. 94)—but proved to be critical in determining career trajectories in the scientists’ undergraduate and graduate education. Moreover, Subotnik et al. (2023) concluded that the insider knowledge that the scientists in their sample benefited from would have been useful to all students.

The Current Study

As noted above, insider knowledge can be useful to students who are committed to developing their talent in a particular domain. Although Subotnik et al. (2023) reported that insider knowledge had not played a major role in some of their participants’ precollegiate trajectories, that study was retrospective, with participants who ranged in age from their 30s to their 70s reporting what they remembered from their precollegiate years. This study is a conceptual replication. We used the Subotnik et al. (2023) study as a starting point and interviewed students who had taken STEM courses in a summer program for academically talented youth. The purpose of this study was to investigate the knowledge and beliefs of students who were still in high school or their first year of college and to see if insider knowledge emerged as something that was important in their trajectories. Questions were intended to get at students’ career goals, the knowledge that they had about those careers, and the sources from which they had gotten their information.

Method

Participants

Participants consisted of a sample of 29 adolescents who had previously attended a summer program for academically talented students in the Western United States (M_age = 16.55, SD_age = 1.50). All participants self-reported coming from middle- to upper class families. Twenty-six participants were high school students at the time of their interview, and three were in their first year of college. Sixteen participants identified as male, 11 participants identified as female, and two participants identified as genderqueer/non-binary. Participants self-reported their ethnic-racial membership as Asian American (n = 9), Indian American (n = 7), Chinese American (n = 6), White American (n = 4), White non-American (n = 1), Hispanic/Latinx (n = 1), and multiracial (n = 1).

Procedure

Participants were recruited via emails sent by the summer program administrators to parents of former students who had attended at least one STEM-related course in the program within the last 2 years. Interested adolescents were asked to reach out to the second author and were subsequently sent the study details and the unsigned consent, assent, and permission forms. Upon receiving assent and informed consent from the adolescents and their parents, respectively, the participants were interviewed individually by the second author. The interviews were conducted via Zoom and were audio recorded. After completing the interview, each participant was compensated with an electronic gift card worth $30. The audio recordings were transcribed automatically by Zoom and verified by the interviewer for accuracy.

The interview protocol consisted of an introduction followed by a list of questions. In the introduction, demographic questions were posed, and the participants were informed that they would be asked some questions about insider knowledge. They were provided with the following definition of insider knowledge, which was read aloud by the interviewer:

As you consider your options for college and career, there may be information that you can get now that will be particularly helpful to you as you move forward. This information is called “insider knowledge” and often includes information about educational options and networks that are known to individuals in a domain but not typically made explicit to individuals outside a domain. An example might be seeking out an opportunity to work in an area of interest in the summer. Knowing insider information about a domain or career can be important in making decisions and contribute to successful outcomes, such as going to the right college and choosing the appropriate major. Today, we want to talk to you about your education path and any insider knowledge you might have gotten along the way.

After the interviewer confirmed that the participants understood the definition, the interview proceeded. The interview protocol consisted of the 12 questions listed below.

1. What degree do you want to pursue in college at this point?

2. Are or were you in any STEM-related clubs in school?

3. What STEM classes have you taken in school and outside of school?

4. Have you participated in any extracurricular activities, summer programs, or other things related to STEM?

5. Have you been told about clubs to join, competitions to participate in, or summer programs you can attend? If so, who has advised you?

6. Is there someone who gives you advice on your future educational and career paths? If yes, who is that, and what kind of advice or information do they give you?

7. Have you discussed potential universities for undergraduate studies with a counselor or other adult? If yes, were there reasons for recommending the specific universities?

8. Do you have a realistic picture of what life is like as a scientist or an engineer? Where does that picture come from?

9. What do you see as potential challenges or obstacles for you to successfully enter a STEM field?

10. What challenges have you had to face so far in pursuing your studies?

11. What would you like help with? Courses to take? Where to go to school? How to find what specific field you really like?

12. What study skills or other kinds of skills do you need to work on in order to be successful in your career?

Our goal in asking these questions was to get at insider knowledge without creating expectancy effects in the participants, so that the responses would not be affected by participants attempting to please the interviewer or to provide information they thought the interviewer wanted. In the previous study that this study is replicating, the first question to the senior scholars who were reporting retrospectively was a specific request with regard to insider knowledge. In this study, we were interested in seeing if the themes that the senior scholars reported—both with regard to and unrelated to insider knowledge—came up. Thus, after defining insider knowledge at the beginning, none of the questions mentioned insider knowledge. The first four questions focused on their plans for college and their general interest in STEM disciplines. Questions 5–8 were intended to understand the types of advice that the students received and the sources of that advice, with the goal of getting at insider knowledge again without naming it. The final set of questions (9–12) were about the challenges that students anticipated in pursuing a career in a STEM field. A theme or subtheme was labeled insider knowledge if it matched the definition provided to the students above: that is, information that would be helpful to all STEM students but was only available to a select few.

Data Analysis

The paper has four authors, including a doctoral student in school psychology and three senior scholars in gifted education. The primary analyses were done by the second author, who is a doctoral student in school psychology. She also served as the only interviewer, which minimized concerns over consensus across the analyses of different interviews. When data collection was completed, the interviewer, who had read all for accuracy, reviewed the 29 transcripts for emergent themes related to insider knowledge. As with the Subotnik et al. (2023) study, the TDMM (Subotnik et al., 2011) was the framing theory for the study. The initial process was deductive, based on the TDMM and the themes reported in the Subotnik et al. (2023) study, with particular attention to themes that were reported for the precollegiate years. However, to minimize bias, the transcripts were also read for new themes that emerged from the data, an inductive process (Mills & Gay, 2019).

The second author identified seven themes. After identifying the main themes, the interviewer identified three transcripts that exemplified the seven emergent themes for the other authors to examine. The other authors reviewed the three transcripts and agreed on the seven key themes, with some minor tweaking of the descriptions of some themes. Based on the key themes that the authors agreed on, the transcripts were reread by the interviewer a third time to settle on the final set of themes, which are reported in the next section.

The authors considered the quality and trustworthiness of the process using Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) criteria. Credibility was based on following a structured interview protocol for maximizing consistency across interviews and having all researchers involved in the theme identification process. Transferability was addressed through the detailed reports of the sample characteristics and acknowledgment of the limitations in the sampling and analytical strategies. Dependability was ensured through thoroughly reporting on the method and disclosing the full interview protocol. Finally, confirmability was addressed through frequent use of quotations for transparent reflection of participant perspectives and using both inductive and deductive approaches in the thematic analysis.

The seven themes were (a) fields of interest for students (e.g., which areas to pursue in relation to current interests and future goals—as reflected in Questions 1–4); (b) sources of knowledge about colleges and (c) choosing a college (e.g., where did students learn about different colleges, how to choose a college, how to be a competitive applicant—as reflected in Questions 5–7); (d) sources of knowledge about careers (e.g., career aspirations, knowledge about STEM careers, anticipated experiences—as reflected in Questions 6–9); (e) areas of challenge (e.g., current challenges as a student, anticipated challenges in college and professional life—as reflected in Questions 9–12); (f) areas for improvement (e.g., perceptions of different skill areas, critical skills to improve for success—as reflected in Questions 9–12); and (g) the need for support (e.g., existing resources, types of support needed—as reflected in Questions 9–12). Several of these themes were similar to themes that emerged in the Subotnik et al. (2023) paper, which summarized the retrospective reflections of individuals in STEM careers who had made outstanding contributions. We expand upon the themes below and note if they were reflected in the previous paper.

Results and Discussion

Theme 1: Fields of Interest for Students

Engineering, medicine, and business, in that order, were the most commonly reported broad fields of interest by the participants. More specifically, students indicated interests in a wide variety of areas, including artificial intelligence, biology, computer science, data science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, public health, and robotics. They also reported participation in clubs at school as well as classes taken in and outside of school in these areas of interest, a subtheme that also emerged from the senior scientists in the Subotnik et al. (2023) study. Almost all participants reported having taken honors and Advanced Placement (AP) classes in STEM.

Multiple participants expressed that they chose to take as many higher level classes as they could to be more competitive in their college applications. If there was limited availability of such classes in their schools, some students reported attending summer programs or enrolling in self-taught AP classes to supplement their schoolwork. Another common reason for attending summer programs or pursuing other STEM-related opportunities was to explore or acquire deeper knowledge in particular areas of interest. Thus, much of the course-taking at this stage was exploratory as students wanted to get a solid understanding of what a particular career might be like.

Theme 2: Sources of Knowledge About Colleges

Aligned with the findings by Subotnik et al. (2023), most students reported receiving guidance from parents, siblings, like-minded peers and older friends, extended family members, and family friends in relevant fields (see Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2018). Given that the majority of the participants were high school students, they sought advice primarily on college admissions and choice of college. So, perhaps not surprisingly, college counselors were another commonly identified source of guidance. These findings suggest a potential change across generations, given that Subotnik et al. (2023) reported that academics who were in their 70s were not able to receive any college counseling when they were in high school. Additionally, although most participants in the current study reported frequent contact with a college counselor, many also mentioned working with a private counselor outside of their school to receive individualized support for their college applications. This latter response speaks to the higher socioeconomic status of these participants, who were able to access a source of information that others from less resourced backgrounds may not be able to.

The Internet, another source not mentioned in the previous study, was also commonly cited as a primary source of information by these participants. The Internet helped students learn about the characteristics of the colleges they were considering, as well as other students’ experiences in these colleges, and they also learned tips for refining their application materials. These resources were also important for students to gather information regarding extracurricular opportunities such as research, mentorship, and internship programs. Consider the following quote that illustrates how an 18-year-old male high school senior described his early experience in a competitive mathematics program that paved the way for their current interest in data science:

I do not think insider knowledge just relates to the specific things related to the field you are going into. It is a combination of all these experiences throughout your life from a while ago. For me, I started doing more in-depth study of specific things back in middle school when I started doing competitive mathematics. I think that the foundational basis for computation is what has shaped me from then till now and my journey into data science. Without that experience, I probably would have never understood the height behind algorithmic thinking or the importance of data in our world.… It also gave me a foundation for how to study and how to start working towards a specific goal. As I started with mathematics, I also started learning about opportunities that I could pursue to gain insider knowledge back in middle school, which also shaped how I have been able to access insider knowledge now in high school.

This student’s response indicates several things. First, it implies that students with specific interests can deliberately seek out insider knowledge. The response also highlights the importance of early entrance into a domain. Although the student downplays the role of domain-specific insider knowledge, this participant began doing competitive mathematics in middle school—a strategy suggested by Subotnik et al.’s (2023) participants—and his response suggests that early entrance into the domain jump-started his quest for learning as much as he could about the domain and the potential trajectory, including insider knowledge. Nonetheless, the response also suggests that although insider knowledge is frequently domain-specific, there is important insider knowledge that is applicable across multiple domains.

Theme 3: Choosing a College

In choosing a college, the most frequently raised criteria included (a) the reputation of the institution, generally, and (b) the reputation of the college in a particular area of interest. However, several students indicated that attending an Ivy League or an equally respected college was important to them, as it would provide good job opportunities in the future, prioritizing the overall reputation of the institution over its quality in a particular field. Both of these strategies are viable alternatives currently. It is true that there are some disciplines (e.g., computer science, engineering) in which the undergraduate institution plays a major role in putting individuals on the pathway to success. On the other hand, recent scholarship has highlighted the disproportionate number of graduates from the 34 elite colleges (including the eight Ivy League colleges) who are in positions of influence in business, politics, academia, the judiciary, and the media (Wai et al., 2024).

The cost of college (i.e., tuition) was also mentioned as an important criterion by multiple students, who expressed interest in the University of California system considering its highly reputable yet affordable programs in STEM fields. On the other hand, a few students expressed willingness to be “a big fish in a small pond,” indicating a preference for more opportunities for research and individual support in a smaller college compared to larger and more populous institutions.

Theme 4: Sources of Knowledge About Careers

In general, participants reported forming their ideas about life as a professional in a STEM field based on personal connections with others or through TV shows and social media. Doing research at a university or a company, being dedicated and passionate about a field, and having a high workload were common themes in the descriptions of professionals in STEM fields provided by students. Notably, more detailed responses were given by students who indicated having close contact with professionals through family ties or mentorship programs.

Consider the following quotes that show rather contrasting perceptions from two junior high school students who had an interest in biology and medicine. A 17-year-old female student said,

I have a picture mostly from the TV and what I have heard from TikTok or social media about what people have said about their experiences as a pre-med track or a science major. A lot of them are just staying in their room and studying or not really having a social life, which is something to consider.

In contrast, a 17-year-old male student said,

I think for me, it would look like being interested in what I am doing and having fun if that makes sense. I want to do something where I am really interested in what I am doing, but where I am also an expert on the topic, and I could know what is going on and work with other people. I am very collaborative, so that is what I think would be fun. Also, not the stress of being a doctor or doing a job where there is a lot of pressure . . . . It is more like, “I am here to innovate.” That does not have much pressure.

The first response highlights the role that social media now plays in providing students with information that they would not have been privy to before its advent. However, it will be important to ascertain how representative of a domain the individuals who are posting regularly on social media. Do time and dedication that are frontloaded during the early years allow for more freedom of thought and movement later on? Nonetheless, TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms have resulted in students having substantially increased access to job-related information that previous generations did not have access to.

The second response speaks to a different kind of insider knowledge. Often, students aspire to careers that offer high earnings, even if the tasks they perform are not their preference. However, this individual knows that he wants a job about which he is passionate and where he can innovate. Although he is naïve in believing that innovation in a collaborative community will not include stress and a lot of pressure, he is also reflecting a theme that came up in Subotnik et al.’s (2023) study. In that study, several individuals reported changing their majors to move to an area that they were more passionate about, and passion has been reported as an important driver of career choice in highly accomplished individuals (Lubinski et al., 2023).

Theme 5: Areas of Challenge

The most commonly experienced and anticipated challenge was competition in school, as well as in college admissions and beyond. Specifically, numerous participants expressed concerns about lacking sufficient research and internship experiences, which they believed would make them competitive candidates in the college admissions process. This concern speaks to a generation that has benefited from insider knowledge. For example, Subotnik and colleagues (2023) reported that their participants learned about the importance of research experiences incidentally. Thus, some information that used to be insider knowledge provided to a few is more generally known by the current participants.

Economic resources were reported as another common challenge. Although not reported as a personal challenge for most students, it was acknowledged as something they had observed when they engaged with peers from disadvantaged communities or had family members from disadvantaged backgrounds. A few students reported having limited opportunities to receive effective guidance and support as they were first-generation college students or were living in underserved communities. Similarly, some students who have recently immigrated to the United States or have immigrant parents who were not educated in the United States expressed challenges in navigating the education system and deciding which opportunities to pursue.

The following quote conveys the psychological pressure associated with feelings of inadequacy identified by a 17-year-old female junior high school student who will be a first-generation college student:

Feeling the pressure of the competitiveness of other students who are trying to get to the same place that you are trying to get to . . . . There are just not enough spots for everyone. And maybe, not feeling like you are good enough to be a part of that.

As the number of students from underrepresented groups has increased in college, the concept of imposter syndrome has taken on greater significance. Moreover, perceived self-doubt about one’s abilities is posited to be prevalent in both high-achieving individuals and youth from underrepresented groups (Chrousos & Alexios-Fotios, 2020). As such, Chrousos and Alexios-Fotios (2020) indicated that higher education institutions should consider imposter syndrome in their admission processes. It is important for educators in the K–12 system to recognize that imposter syndrome can begin, as in this case, long before actually enrolling in college, so that schools can deal explicitly with this issue. Also, imposter syndrome may be more common and important to address in schools that are doing a good job in preparing students from low-income and marginalized minority backgrounds for tertiary education.

Theme 6: Areas for Improvement

Time management was the most commonly mentioned skill that the participants expressed a need to work on. Specifically, numerous students indicated that they struggled with managing their time as they had to simultaneously keep their grades high, be actively involved in clubs, and prepare for standardized tests for college applications. For some students, music and sports were substantial parts of their workload, although a few other students shared that they were no longer able to engage in such activities due to academic demands. As one student said,

I am always running short on time, and I procrastinate a lot. So, it is always like the night before an assignment, when I am up late and finishing this work that was given a week ago that I could have done a couple of days ago . . . . I feel like a lot of things relate to that such as organization, like organizing your time better. Then you could say, “Oh, I am going here today, so I will not have time to do this assignment or send this email. I should do it now rather than later (16-year-old female high school junior)

Time management seems to be a theme that never goes away, as it was raised by scientists interviewed by Subotnik et al. (2023), although in the context of graduate school. Moreover, high-achieving males and females allot their time differently across their careers (Lubinski et al., 2023). As Lubinski et al. (2023) noted, high-impact careers require trade-offs involving time allotment, and men and women approach this differently. They noted that at age 50, exceptional men (a) reported having devoted more hours to work than exceptional women, (b) devoted fewer hours to home and family than exceptional women, and (c) indicated a willingness to work more hours in their ideal job than exceptional women. Although these exceptional men and women did not differ in well-being and their outlook for the future, it seems that even for individuals who are extremely high functioning, women bear a greater burden for the family.

Other areas in which these STEM-talented individuals reported needing support included psychosocial skills such as focusing on tasks, avoiding procrastination, and prioritizing certain tasks over others for efficiency. A few students mentioned that maintaining focus has been particularly challenging since the COVID-19 pandemic. See the following quote from a 16-year-old male high school junior that illustrates how his experience with procrastination got worse over the COVID-19 pandemic:

I have a huge problem with procrastination. That is the one big thing that really hindered my success as a student and put me through a lot of stress that is probably unnecessary. The skills that I need to work on are procrastination and being focused; sometimes I find it hard to focus on certain things that I am trying to learn. I kind of blame COVID a little bit, but it is kind of an individual thing. So, I think it’s something that I got to work on.

When asked about any other notable experiences with insider knowledge at the end of the interview, a 17-year-old female senior high school student shared the following statement about her volunteer work, which points to the issues with access to education during the pandemic:

Like in [my city], where it is definitely not as resourced as it is here, I can definitely see how location and access to these [resources] can impact their education. Because during COVID, a lot of the kids that I tutored didn’t have computers to take online classes and things like that. So, it definitely got in the way of their education and caused them to fall a bit behind.

Given the life-changing impact of COVID-19 and reports that it has resulted in people reconsidering their priorities concerning work versus home and family (e.g., Parker et al., 2022), it will be interesting to see if the time priorities of males and females who experienced the pandemic in high school become less discrepant.

Theme 7: The Need for Support

Regarding what would be helpful, the most frequent response from students was receiving more nuanced guidance with respect to different career paths, a theme that the successful scientists also raised, with specific examples such as how to manage doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows and how to collaborate well. Although many students reported having access to individuals whom they could ask questions of or receive support from when needed, they also indicated a limited understanding of their options and areas for improvement. As mentioned above, many of these participants indicated that summer programs or mentorship opportunities that enabled them to gather specific ideas in their areas of interest were substantially helpful for their decision-making processes. Nonetheless, they still felt the need for more specific guidance:

I probably like it [i.e., guidance] to focus on what courses to take and what stuff to do, because I think for me, at least, I feel like I have a lack of direction. I know the endpoint where I want to go, but I am not sure if I know the steps to get there. I think that is the same with a lot of people, especially young people, because we do not have a ton of guidance, especially from the school. The school counselor does not tell us a lot, and they are very busy because there is only one or two of them for a lot of kids. (17-year-old male high school junior)

Strengths and Limitations

This conceptual replication of the Subotnik et al. (2023) study had both strengths and limitations. First, by interviewing adolescents, we were not relying on memory, as in the previous manuscript, but learning about students’ current perspectives. Nonetheless, the students’ self-reports may still be influenced by biases or perceptions that do not fully reflect the broader reality of STEM career pathways. Furthermore, our sample was mostly homogeneous in terms of participant characteristics such as socioeconomic status, geographic location, and access to resources, which are directly related to the process of insider knowledge acquisition. Although we acknowledged these characteristics through detailed reports of our qualitative methodology, the generalizability of our findings to the broader population is limited. It is probable that students from less resourced families may not have access to the breadth of knowledge that the current sample has. Finally, having a single interviewer who also did the primary analyses may have influenced how the results were reported, even though we tried to address this limitation through the involvement of the other authors in the analyses. Future research could benefit from mixed-method and longitudinal approaches to examine the importance of different types of knowledge and how both explicit knowledge and insider knowledge influence students’ actual career decisions.

Conclusion

The call for more guidance in the last quotation above speaks directly to the rationale for this paper, that is, the importance of insider knowledge for maximizing potential (Subotnik et al., 2023). As the response indicates, even for these students who are from middle- and higher income families with access to counselors and family members in domains in which they are interested, there is still a sense that they are navigating the talent development path on their own. Given that all of these students are high-functioning individuals who are participating in summer programs and seeking out internships, their ability to maximize their potential may well depend on having greater access to knowledgeable individuals who can help. Moreover, this issue is one that can magnify the opportunity gaps that are already present among students from different socioeconomic groups. Thus, it is a problem that our society and education system needs to find a way to address.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Academic Talent Development Program (ATDP) at the University of California, Berkeley for their assistance.

ORCID iDs

Frank C. Worrell

Ilke Bayazitli

Rena F. Subotnik

Paula Olszewski-Kubilius

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: The research was supported by the Academic Talent Development Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Frank C. Worrell, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of research include cultural identities, talent development, and time perspective. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science, and a member of the National Academy of Education and the Society for the Study of School Psychology. He was the 2022 President of the American Psychological Association.

Ilke Bayazitli is a doctoral student in school psychology at UC Berkeley. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Boğaziçi University and a master’s degree in psychological science from San Francisco State University. Her research is centered on child and adolescent well-being, gifted and talented students, time perspective, and protective and preventive approaches from the perspective of positive psychology.

Rena F. Subotnik, PhD, serves as Research Associate at the Academic Talent Development Program, University of California, Berkeley. Previously, she was Senior Director of the Center for Psychology in Schools and Education at the American Psychological Association. A mission of the Center was to generate public awareness and cutting-edge research ideas about performance of children and adolescents with gifts and talents in all domains.

Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, PhD, is the immediate past director of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University and professor emeritus in the School of Education and Social Policy. She served as president of the National Association for Gifted Children (2011–2013) and received the Distinguished Scholar Award in 2009. With colleagues, her publications received the Gifted Child Quarterly Paper of the Year Award in 2011, 2018, and 2020 and the Gifted Child Quarterly Paper of the Decade in 2020. She is a fellow in the American Psychological Association.

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Investigating the Insider Knowledge of STEM-Talented Adolescents

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The Talent Development Megamodel

Insider Knowledge

The Current Study

Method

Participants

Procedure

Data Analysis

Results and Discussion

Theme 1: Fields of Interest for Students

Theme 2: Sources of Knowledge About Colleges

Theme 3: Choosing a College

Theme 4: Sources of Knowledge About Careers

Theme 5: Areas of Challenge

Theme 6: Areas for Improvement

Theme 7: The Need for Support

Strengths and Limitations

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

ORCID iDs

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Author Biographies

References