Issue Date: August 10, 2003

GEAR

The Brainiac's Guide to Back to School

America's smartest kids tell us what's cool this fall.

By Frappa Stout

It's that time again: The future leaders of America are gearing up for battle. As young overachievers gather their supplies, charge their PDAs and plot their courses for another record-breaking academic year, we decided to take a peek inside their book bags and find out what they have in their back-to-school arsenals. Here's what our whiz kids can't live without:

Communication. To keep up on homework, gossip and plans for the weekend (yes, smart kids have social lives, too), our brainiacs rely on instant messaging, or "IM'ing," to send quick e-mail notes. (Most Internet providers offer this service today, but AOL is still the favorite). These handy-dandy messages flash immediately on your screen, provided you're online at the time. They are perfect for time-crunched busybodies. "IM'ing is so much faster, and with connections [that don't tie up the phone line] like DSL or cable modems, a lot of my friends leave their service on all the time, even when they're sleeping!" says Jennifer Hernandez, a senior with a 4.85 grade-point average at North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Fla. Hernandez, national award winner in the Mu Alpha Theta math competitions and the Academic Games, says her favorite cool new features are the "away message" and "forward" commands, which let her set automatic replies to IMs that come in while she's away or forward them to her cellphone as text messages.

Let's not forget that these future Einsteins are teenagers, so style matters. "I just got my first cellphone, a Nokia, a couple weeks ago," says Ho Seung "Paul" Ryu, a senior at Pacific Grove (Calif.) High School and a winner of last year's Siemens (Foundation) Award for Advanced Placement. "It's got color and polyphonic ring tones, which sound like little techno pieces and always turn heads. My parents send me text messages all the time, and I mess around with it even if I don't have to." Cellphones today have inexpensive fashion faceplates, color displays, games and custom ring tones that you can download from the Internet (for a fee). But a word to the wise: Many schools don't allow cellphones on campus.

Web sites. "Smart kids are not supposed to have time, right?" says Ryu, a straight-A student who plans to pursue a degree in computer science at Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech or Stanford. "But we still have to get to know the world." So he goes to news.google.com for a quick, digestible bite of the latest from around the globe.

To help maintain her 4.0 average, Ann Chi visits encyclopedia sites such as Britannica.com. "It's great for biographies of people," says the senior from Terre Haute (Ind.) South Vigo High School and a national finalist in the 2002-03 Siemens Westinghouse science competition. "Also, when I'm trying to do a report on a broad topic and don't really know where to start -- and looking on Google would give me a lot of specific sites I don't know what to do with -- Britannica does a good job of breaking it down into subtopics I can use," Chi says. Other sites for research-paper help are Webster.commnet.edu, for tips on getting started, and thesaurus .com or wordreference.com, for finding that perfect verb or adjective.

Study aids. Even the smartest kids need them, and the most popular now are the mystery Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the New SAT, the Princeton Review's SAT I and SAT II guides, and the College Board's Real SAT books. "They're great for standardized tests, because they provide old tests with answers," Chi says. "If you do enough of these, you'll start getting the pattern of what kinds of questions they ask and how they want you to respond -- which is not necessarily what really ought to be the answer."

Electronics. Even at schools that don't allow electronic items like PDAs, the ever-popular graphing calculator (such as Texas Instruments' TI-83 Plus or TI-89) is OK. Students we interviewed used words like "indispensable" and "lifesaving" to describe it. "Since I started using one, I seem to have lost the ability to make simple calculations in my head," says Chi Nguyen, a junior at California High School in San Ramon, Calif., and a winner of the prestigious Start Something scholarship.

Sneakers. For Ryu and friends, the style is anything goes, as long as it's comfortable and durable. Adidas sandals, Steve Madden backless sneakers and Asics tennis shoes are hot for girls, while the guys go for Nike basketball sneakers and Timberland boots.

Bags. To carry all that gear, you need something big -- and strong. Because these cream-of-the-crop students tote ridiculous amounts of books every day, large hiking-type backpacks (such as JanSport's Big Student or Aurora, Eastpak's Master Mind and North Face's Recon) are popular. And for hipsters who can get away with carrying a bit less, it's all about the one-shoulder or "sling" bag, such as the JanSport Madison or Grind. By keeping it all together, these kids stay ahead of the game.