Tl;dr - Romania, like other Eastern European states, uses "tracking" or separate educational streams, so students from "National Colleges" (the top tier of Romanian high schools) tend to be overrepresented.

> The design of Romania’s educational system makes it perhaps the most stratified educational system in the world

> One of the cruel parts of the Romanian system is that, though sorting is nationally available, students do not have equal opportunities to sort. Students located in smaller towns have fewer high school options to select from unless they’re among the few who opt into a military academy, which means joining the military

> This combined sorting between schools and tracks means that low-ability students get stuck with other low-ability students, and high-ability students are surrounded by other high-ability students. In effect, peer groups throughout high school are extremely homogeneous.

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While this is good for identifying talent for Olympiads, it's questionable whether this is a net benefit for Romania as a whole. Neighboring Poland doesn't have the same level of tracking in it's educational system and has much stronger human capital based on HDI compared to Romania, despite both being roughly comparable to each other in the 1990s.

Human capital isn't developed by having a minority of students becoming the cream of the crop, it comes by helping all students get the option or ability to rise to the academic level at which they can succeed irrespective of geographic location (small town vs city), ethnicity, or economic class.

Ik people tend to point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian Olympiad students as being examples of success, but most of them also attended top universities due to their Olympiad attendance, so I doubt the Olympiad itself had an impact compared to attending a Tsinghua, FyzTech (Citadel still hires from there for the London office at least circa 2023 despite the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia), or IIT Delhi.

And anecdotally at least, I went to HS and college with a decent number of national and international Olympiad winners (one of whom was both a IMO and IPhO team member concurrently), and while they did decent in life (some HFT, mostly academia) it wasn't much different of an outcome compared to our peers who didn't partake in those olympiads.

This shouldn't dissuade people from doing Olympiads if they wish, but targeting Olympiad success for the sake of Olympiad success seems toxic and a waste of resources.

Edit: cannot reply

> Cyberax

I am not opposed to students participating in Olympiads od they chose so with full autonomy and independence, just like I am not opposed to students who want to do well in sports because they like sports.

If you are forcing your kid to be a tier 1 quarterback OR a IMO participant, you aren't making them a well rounded student.

And if you as a society make "being a football player" or "being a topper" the primary goal, you aren't actually identifying new talent, because the only way to rise to the top in a field is if you have an actual aptitude AND interest.

There's a reason why China and India are seeing significant social opposition from younger generations about "test driven" and "rote" culture, the same way plenty of boomer nerds on HN who grew up in the 80s and 90s were probably ostracized for not being into football (idk - I wasn't around for much of the 90s, I'm subsisting of pop culture from that era like Daria)

> Ik people tend to point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian Olympiad students as being examples of success, but most of them also attended top universities due to their Olympiad attendance, so I doubt the Olympiad itself had an impact compared to attending a Tsinghua, FyzTech (Citadel still hires from there for the London office at least circa 2023 despite the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia), or IIT Delhi.

Path to FyzTech lies through FMSHs which accept high school students largely via regional-level Olympiads. And path to that lies through the Olympiad "circle" in your local school.

You probably can build a stratified education system without Olympiads, but as a matter of fact in Russia they do actually play an important role in the overall structure.

> Ik people tend to point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian Olympiad students as being examples of success, but most of them also attended top universities due to their Olympiad attendance, so I doubt the Olympiad itself had an impact compared to attending a Tsinghua, FyzTech (Citadel still hires from there for the London office at least circa 2023 despite the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia), or IIT Delhi.

First, if you remove the Olympiad-based admission, there's no guarantee that these students could _get_ into the top-level universities.

Second, people in the US _love_ to point out that athletics "builds the character" and sets people up for success later in life. Well, do you think that training for Olympiads and competing in high-stakes academic tournaments also does nothing?

> it's questionable whether this is a net benefit for Romania as a whole.

it depends what's most beneficial: having a few percents of very mathematically experts people in maths-heavy professions? Or having everyone somewhat decent at maths, even when it doesn't affect their productivity in their jobs?

I don't have any hard data about this, but instinctively I'd bet on the former: I'd rather have a few hundreds more Sutskevers, than most of the country's bakers know their way around PDE.

I don’t necessarily see a problem with enabling like talented groups to be mingled together, that said it depends on the metrics. A friend who had a 3.2 in HS did way better in life than several 4.0+ students.

The other end of the spectrum is the way most of the US handles high school. Long gone are gifted and talented programs before high school and in many cases, for instance those with an ability for math are stuck in classes with those that will top out before algebra.

I understand your point, but the catering to the mediocre that happens these days in US grade schools isn’t the right answer either.

>Edit: cannot reply

What do you mean you cannot reply?

> Neighboring Poland

they aren't neighbors.

What's HDI ?