For 16-year-old Eugene So, the Center for Talented Youth summer program provides a valuable opportunity to interact with his peers.

The former Punahou student has been attending the University of Hawai'i-Manoa since age 13, so being able to sit in a classroom with kids his age is rare.

"It's better for my life to have an experience like this," said So, who has taken classes through the center for the past three years, both at the Hawai'i Pacific University campus in Kane'ohe and at Loyola Marymount University in California.

Johns Hopkins University has been offering the summer program for gifted students since 1979, and the courses are now offered at 23 sites across the country, including Hawai'i.

The HPU site offers courses in geopolitics, cryptology, oceanography, logic and essay writing. Teachers from across the country have come to Hawai'i to lead the courses, and students from the Mainland and foreign countries come to take them. Only about a dozen of the 83 students this session come from Hawai'i.

Next year, CTY hopes even more students will participate. Scholarship money is available to qualified applicants.

This time around So is taking essay writing, but in the past the math major has taken computer science, chemistry and physics. "It's just fun and I do learn a lot," he said.

While So is just coming over the mountain from Honolulu, Nolan Kamitaki has come from Hilo to take a course in cryptology. Nolan, 13, had wanted to participate in the program in the past, but his parents were reluctant to send him to the Mainland. Coming to a Neighbor Island was a good compromise.

His mother, Lynn Kamitaki, said they let Nolan apply for the program after seeing how much a neighbor's daughter enjoyed it. She said $3,000 is a hefty price to pay for the three-week program, but it will pay off if Nolan remains interested once summer is over.

Her son needs to be more academically challenged, she said.

"I guess we were really curious whether this would excite him enough to continue on a path of science or math or whatever he chooses to do," she said. "This might be a way to keep his interest piqued in math and science."

After the first week of making and breaking codes, Nolan said he is motivated to use the formulas and theories he has learned in the math league he participates in. He said he was torn between taking cryptology or oceanography, but the codes won him over.

"Cryptology is very fun," he said, after the class cracked two different kinds of ciphers. "It might seem pretty dry sitting at a desk all day and deciphering codes, but there's a lot more to it."

What he is learning in cryptology can be used to build different types of machines and to write computer programs, he explained. "A lot of things are related," he said.

Jack Reilly, a resident adviser for the program who once was a student participant, said he keeps coming back because he enjoys working with the kids. "They're so bright and ahead of their peers, but socially and emotionally they're just like every other 14-year-old," he said.

He said the program gives the students a social experience like many of them have never experienced because their academic abilities can make it difficult for them to make friends in school.

At the Center for Talented Youth, they're almost all "nerds," Reilly said. "A lot of them come to CTY and find that for the first time they have a group they can really get along with and really bond with."