Becoming and Being a Talented Undergraduate Student

This article reports on a case study of one New Zealand university faculty involved in the second phase of a three-phase study investigating the experiences of talented undergraduate students. Talented undergraduate students are a largely forgotten group in research. The current study sought to investigate who the talented students were, and then what their lived experiences as talented undergraduate students were. The study involved 128 undergraduate students who provided information about their experiences as high achieving students in an undergraduate degree program. Approximately 10% of all students enrolled across five different undergraduate degree programs in the faculty were defined as talented undergraduate students. These students were ethnically diverse and largely older than we had anticipated. The majority had not previously been identified as talented and many had been largely unsuccessful educationally, prior to embarking on their undergraduate studies. Several students experienced challenging personal circumstances, such as financial hardship and extensive family responsibilities. The grit or resilience demonstrated by these students seemed to explain the essence of the phenomenon of being a talented undergraduate student in this faculty.