I did a brief search for related materials, and the first thing I found was: The contribution of influence and selection to adolescent peer group homogeneity: T

I did a brief search for related materials, and the first thing I found was: The contribution of influence and selection to adolescent peer group homogeneity: The case of adolescent cigarette smoking, Source: Journal of personality and social psychology [0022-3514] Ennett yr:1994 vol:67 pg:653 . This is not directly related to what I said, but it did display the trend that homogeneous peer groups tend towards becoming more homogeneous, or more specifically that those who did not do an activity in a somewhat homogeneous peer group tended to start doing that activity more than the opposite way around. My problem with primarily "gifted" schools (specifically private schools and the IB program) is actually two-fold. The first is that it leads to a large peer group of mostly similar students. Nope, no proof as to why that is bad. All I can say about it is that in every single example I have seen of students in a largely homogeneous situation, be it everyone has above average intelligence to everyone coming from a poor, high-crime neighborhood, the end result is an amplification of the negative aspects of that peer-group. In most cases, on of the biggest negative factors is that at some critical point a homogeneous peer group begins to automatically discount any individual who does not fit with their group. Its a sad fact, but things like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=837046 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=837046 (skip the first thread) happen quite a bit from "higher echelon" schools of any time, high school or college. On top of that, due to the self-selection features of these peer-groups, they spread any sort of habit much faster among the individuals. The other problem (which I admittedly did not mention in the first post) is that an advanced curriculum is not what an advanced student needs, they need ready access and encouragement for extra-curricular activities of their choice, which your link supports.