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Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

palladiummag.com

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Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#101

Post by progbits »

laserbeam wrote: post #68

As a Romanian who has been very involved in Olympiads as a kid, I can tell that most of this is accurate. I’ve also lived in Denmark at university for several years and can contrast educational systems from first hand experience. The sorting the author describes absolutely DOES happen in Romania. Exactly as he describes it, “getting into a good school” is incredibly important for students and parents here. I’d also l…

I have mixed feelings. "Educating the masses" is important, at least to a certain baseline, otherwise we get failing democracies due to manipulation of uneducated voters.

But it's important to still have a separate track for the best students. Those will grow up to do the important work and move the society forward. If you put them into a mediocre class it will waste their potential.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#102

Post by hemabe »

I noticed this phenomenon several years ago and came to the following conclusions: Romania is strongly multi-ethnic. Germans from Saxony and Swabia immigrated to Transylvania 800 years ago. A thousand years ago, people from northern India immigrated, whom we now know as Gypsies and who make up 8-10% of the population. In the south, the country was besieged by the Ottomans/Turks for 400 years. The cognitive differences between these ethnic groups are enormous.

Some time ago, I asked ChatGPT to find the winners of the Math Olympiads, their schools, and their places of birth. Most of the Olympiad winners attended elite schools in Bucharest, with few math participants coming from the south of the country and no participants who could be classified as Gypsies. But surprisingly many participants come from Transylvania.

In 2023, for example, a computer science Olympiad participant from Orăștie (Hunedoara County) won a silver medal. Orăștie is located in Transylvania and historically had a Saxon community. Brașov (Kronstadt) also recently produced medal winners: in 2025, a student from the Meșotă College in Brașov won silver at the Chemistry Olympiad. Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg) also appears on the list – a student from the Bălcescu Lyceum there won silver at the Linguistics Olympiad in 2024. Timișoara (Temeswar)—also a western city with German history—was represented by a student (Carmen Sylva College) with an Honorable Mention in linguistics. These examples support the thesis that educational centers in the former Habsburg regions produce above-average talent.

Is there any further information about the ethnic origin of the Science Olympiad participants? I would be grateful for any information (even if it does not confirm the thesis).

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#103

Post by dyauspitr »

trallnag wrote: post #99
Kudos wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None? > Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics.

So talking about eugenics in a positive way equals racist commentary? I have a genetic mutation (de novo) that leads to a disability and that I don't want to pass on. Natural approach: Die, due to the lack of therapeutic modalities. No chance of offspring. With the help of medicine, I am alive. Now, to prevent passing on mutated genes but still have children, I could use something like IVF and reproductive genetics.…

Yes, culling the population by any means to select for the “intelligent” population is highly subjective and will result in racist outcomes.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#105

Post by siva7 »

somenameforme wrote: post #96
laserbeam wrote: post #68

As a Romanian who has been very involved in Olympiads as a kid, I can tell that most of this is accurate. I’ve also lived in Denmark at university for several years and can contrast educational systems from first hand experience. The sorting the author describes absolutely DOES happen in Romania. Exactly as he describes it, “getting into a good school” is incredibly important for students and parents here. I’d also l…

The practical issue which so many people don't seem to want to acknowledge is that students are different. I have taught and there are some students that simply lack either the intelligence, discipline, interest, or some other aspect that makes it literally impossible for them to ever receive anything beyond a basic education. You could give them 10 on 1 specialized instruction from the the most competent/interesting…

[flagged]

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#106

Post by saagarjha »

koolba wrote: post #47
ecshafer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with you. Children are adaptable and will rise to the challenge. The west too often prefers to think children are capable of nothing, and have them wallow in an intellectual void.

It’s not just intellectual challenge that parents are unwilling to entertain. It’s part of a wider problem of avoiding any and all confrontation. The moment a child shows any disinterest, the activity is shut down. It’s why you have a generation of kids that only eat chicken fingers and french fries. The average parent is unwilling to even teach their children to eat and enjoy actual food. Why bother when you can jus…

Of course, you are an enlightened parent that is better than all those other parents that spoil their children and prevent them from achieving all that they could do. More seriously, though, good and bad parents exist everywhere. It is intellectually lazy to call other people's kids tendie eaters because you think they are underserved. Grow up, man.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#107

Post by akoboldfrying »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #32
kazinator wrote: post #16

The education system is stratified, keeping high-achieving students together, promoting them to schools with good teachers, etc. OK, so then why don't the situations given in the elaborate description then show up in the statistics, like the "fat right tail" that isn't there? It's because the students sent to olympiads are statistical outliers, too few in number to skew statistics. The system acts to identify and fos…

> The system acts to identify and foster them, but to the detriment of national averages. This is the usual argument against stratified education systems but is it proven in any way? My experience with stratified systems is that they increase both high quantiles and the average. Maybe (even if not established), maybe they reduce low quantiles like the 0.1th, but very unlikely they damage the average. Quite the opposi…

> is it proven in any way?

The figure in the article claims to show that this is indeed the case -- though as I noted in my other comments, the y axis is actually uninterpretable ("percentiles" can't be negative).

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#108

Post by saagarjha »

oefrha wrote: post #61
kazinator wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get excellence in a tiny number of individuals who don't budge the statistics. The national averages are poor, and the excelling individuals are not even numerous enough to create a "fat right tail".

Scientific and technological breakthroughs are created by the few. Always been, always will be. Fewer than 1 in 10,000 people are responsible for the current AI breakthroughs for instance, and I’m being conservative. You don’t need a fat right tail to completely change your country; of course, most of your tiny number of excellent individuals leaving for richer countries is a different problem altogether.

No, it's the same problem. Nobody wants to live in a country where everyone is impoverished and illiterate.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#109

Post by akoboldfrying »

f33d5173 wrote: post #55
akoboldfrying wrote: post #4

This is a very interesting topic and the article seems quite thorough. But I have trouble interpreting the crucial "School and track sorting can bolster or bust academic achievement" plots: The y axis is labelled "Graduation score percentile", but it has negative numbers on the scale. How are these values being corrected? The series for 1-school towns on the left plot is basically flat; am I supposed to believe that,…

It says "effect" of school sorting. So the "graduation score percentile" must be the change in percentile due to school sorting.

That seems plausible, but change with respect to what baseline? I think the sensible baseline would be the entry exam percentile (x axis), but others are conceivable.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#110

Post by oytis »

siva7 wrote: post #105
somenameforme wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical issue which so many people don't seem to want to acknowledge is that students are different. I have taught and there are some students that simply lack either the intelligence, discipline, interest, or some other aspect that makes it literally impossible for them to ever receive anything beyond a basic education. You could give them 10 on 1 specialized instruction from the the most competent/interesting…

[flagged]

There aren't universally good teachers. A teacher who can help a good student achieve exceptional results will not necessarily be good at making sure an unmotivated student gets a bare minimum and vice versa.

Unmotivated students need predefined structure, repetition, simplification and gamification. Talented ones need discussing first principles, being challenged, working at the edge of knowledge

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