The Professional Development of Gifted Students in Mathematics: A Follow-Up Study of the Winners of Mathematics Competitions

Abstract

Mathematics competition winners are key subjects in research on mathematically gifted education. This study examined thecareer trajectories, academic achievements, and personal traits of 116 high school mathematics competition winners (graduating from 2008 to 2015) through the longitudinal questionnaire analysis. The key findings are as follows: (1) career clustering in STEM fields (technology, academia, finance) and advanced degree pursuits (81 participants); (2) high academic productivity, with 43 participants publishing as first authors and 13 holding patents; (3) income polarization (22.4% earning >¥40,000 vs. 12.1% earning <¥5,000 monthly); (4) elevated perfectionism (95.6%) and creativity (96.6%) in self-assessments; and (5) perceived benefits of competition experiences, including enhanced learning skills (87.9%) and academic growth (76.7%). The results highlight the strong correlation between mathematical talent and STEM-oriented careers, exceptional scholarly output, and the enduring impact of personal traits (e.g., perfectionism) and environmental factors on professional success. This work offers empirical insights into cultivating mathematically gifted individuals and assessing the long-term effectiveness of competition-based education.

Received: 16 April 2025 | Revised: 6 June 2025 | Accepted: 15 August 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Due to the involvement of participants' private data in this study, data sharing is not applicable to this article.

Author Contribution Statement

Peijie Jiang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Wenqian Lin: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization.