When it comes time to enroll in college, I want that savant to go to the best music secondary school that they want to attend. I don't care whether they were "born with it" or "earned it", but I do care that they demonstrate outstanding ability.

Not "outstanding ability, after considering factors X, Y, and Z", but simply "outstanding ability".

What is "the best school" here? It must be "the school that will best develop their particular talents", right?

Presumably you want them to go to that school so they can produce the best music possible with their abilities, for the benefit of society. The other option I see is that you might want them to go to that school because they have "earned it", but this is silly, especially considering a case where they haven't done anything, and are just naturally talented!

You now have two problems- first, one school might be excellent at training good musicians but not so great at training savants. Second...

Suppose you have one spot in a magical "savant school", which is able to develop somebody's skills better than anywhere else in the world. You'd want to assign the student who would benefit most to this spot- the one who has greatest potential.

This is NOT the student who currently writes the best music- this is the one who will write the best music after attending the school.

You don't care about ability now- you care about ability later. Predicting the latter from the former alone has an obvious flaw- training and practice improve ability.

Because of this, it's a good idea to consider measures of how much training somebody has had, in addition to their current ability, for admissions decisions.

Unfortunately, quantifying that is hard- so other metrics are used as proxies. In considering admission to an Olympic swimmer training program, for example, perhaps one might consider how early somebody learned to swim, or how often they visited a swimming pool.

No?

The best music school here is the one that they wish to attend. They (and those who advise them) are in a far better position to evaluate the variety of factors that influence that decision than I am, as someone whose only musical instrument ability is a CD player or iPod.

Some music savants want to attend a music school that the composer or musician they most admire attended, others the one that is closest to home.

Iiiinteresting. Seriously.

I don't understand why one would want a talented student to get preferential admission to a school because, for example, he liked the design of the campus. I only get the argument that a talented student should get admitted to a school that'll best develop those talents. The link between "you're talented" and "...so you should get to go to any school you want!" is one I don't get.

Why doesn't that lead to absurdities like a school which specifically excels at teaching "low-talent" students, churning out competent (if unexceptional) composers, still admitting talented students preferentially?

And if the savant kid happened to only see a musical instrument for the first time at 10 years old, so that when they took their music entrance exams at 11 years old their performance was very good but not quite at the same level as the other kids who had been learning for 10 years, you would just want to assess all of them on performance at that moment, and choose the kids that had been playing longer because your objective assessment is that they are better musicians.

What if they first touched an instrument at age 25? Well, that person wouldn't get into a top music school at age 18.

It's true that I value demonstrated objective competence rather than subjective predicted future competence.

In your autistic savant musician example, they are probably practicing obsessively every second they can manage, and may actually have earned their success. Does their hard work not count because their biology "made them do it?" I guess that's a question that cuts right to the heart of free will and applies to all of us in the end.

what if they aren't practicing every second? what if it simply comes out 100% effortlessly? how do you define "earn"? only X hours of obsessive practice? does their skill not count because they didn't put in years of 'hard work'?

> what if it simply comes out 100% effortlessly? What magical world do you live in? Have you ever acquired any skill in your life?

Did you see the reference to 'autistic savant' up above? That was the example referenced. And even if someone does work/practice some, if the effort is minimal relative to other people ('normal' people, or what not), does it diminish the ability because they didn't "work hard" for it?

personally, I'm no savant, but as a child I really didn't have to work hard at anything in school. I was pushed up a grade, and was still at the top of that class, and bored, for years. i put in basically no effort in to any schooling for years, and was still, generally, way ahead of many other students who, looking back now, were struggling (this was in the day when students could be 'held back' to repeat a grade - I don't think that's done much today?).

i have learned plenty of skills, and some took years, and it's never ending. but some came - essentially - effortlessly (or appeared effortless relative to peers' efforts).

I do understand the initial example; and I have a story similar to yours. But you're comparing apples to oranges here: the experience of having a decent working memory and getting good grades due to schools being unable to test for real knowledge (but regurgitation of facts) and catering to the lowest common denominator, vs the ability to play a musical instrument skillfully are two very, very different problems.

My claim is that the latter is a skill that nobody is born with. Autistic savants aren't some type of magic creature that know things just by virtue of being savants. They still have to go through the process of skill acquisition. Now that process may be accelerated compared to me or you, but I disagree with your claim of proficiency with zero effort, especially with skills that have shown to require thousands of hours of deliberate practice to establish proficiency.

I think the key is in your last statement: "or appeared effortless relative to peers' efforts". It seems you found yourself in an environment which didn't sufficiently challenge you. This would only argue that you should've been pushed up to more challenging AP/honors classes. This would again have the effect of placing you in a higher standing compared to your peers. So if both you and your peers would be pushed to your true potential, it seems consistent with your statements to say your performance/output would've been superior.

So why should colleges deny you entry because of your ability to be proficient in the system they've set up?

If you stop rewarding "luck", where luck means inherent ability, then all the "lucky" people will voluntarily exile themselves into careers that are actually fun and which they can put maximum effort into, and stop working 8 to 6 designing hydroelectric power systems or writing biannual rice production forecasts or gently explaining how to write status update emails to software engineers.

Plus, to what extent is the capacity for hard work based on luck? If long hours give you clinical depression because you got 50 bad genes and experienced neglect as a child and lived in a house with lead paint, do you get sent to live in a slum with the rest of the "lazy" people?