Overall band score 8.

What's the next step? I am an Indian and wish to pursue a master's program in the US.

Should I prepare for the GRE and apply for spring semester? Total newbie about all of this university stuff.

Thanks in advance.

As my school project this year, I'm making a metasearch engine for courses (any type, online/offline, free/paid). I could just add the websites I know myself but school requires us to provide a detailed explanation of how we did "market research", so I'm asking here.

What websites do you usually go to first to when you want to learn something? It should preferably be something which is not exclusive to IT, but those websites are fine as well if they're really good.

My son shares a lot of my traits, including being Gifted. He's in kindergarten now, and we were looking into getting him a IEP (individual education plan) because he's Gifted.

In doing so though, someone brought up that it might result in an ASD diagnosis essentially - and they were right. Haven't had the formal test yet, but a lot of what I considered "idiosyncrises" in my son are also found in autistic individuals. Some of which I share. I have little doubt in the ultimate conclusion, which is that he's 2e (twice exceptional).

And it seems quite likely I am as well. It's gonna be a niche audience, but anyone in a similar boat? It feels weird looking back and (at 34) retroactively realizing why I do certain things the way I do.

Edit: I should add - it didn't really 'matter' to my development because I was Gifted. I can learn whatever, pretty darn fast. So I just taught myself social stuff, on purpose, when I was in high school and college. It takes a lot of effort on my part, but I can be "charasmatic". I ascribed the effort to my general tendency toward introversion, but it may have been, essentially, the mental cost of masking.

Edit2: oh man I even went out of my way to try and alter my personality towards more extroversion in college because it seemed more normal.

Edit3: and I taught myself to understand body language in high school, particularly to understand and help with reading girls I liked, and how they were reacting to various levels of flirtation.

Edit4:
My spatial sense is god level. My wife doesn't bother remembering where the car is, because I just know.

My audition is similarly unrivaled, I hear things others don't, and my phonological loop is amazing - I can hold audio in my head for a time if I'm truly concentrating on something else.

My imagination is virtually non-existent, I'm nearly a complete aphantasia case - the best I can ever manage is a pulse of a 2d image, kinda.

I'm incredibly good at math, computer science, etc. I know more about science than... anyone else I've met.

I've never really felt like I didn't belong, though. I just learned how to be an effective communicator from books and videos. I almost feel like I have weaponized ASD.

Recently my daughter (third grade) has started learning to type at school. It's a Montessori program, so it's a pretty low tech environment overall, which I mention because I don't necessarily expect them to have a nuanced view of technology issues.

One of the typing programs they use is nitrotype.com, which adds a competitive gameplay element. However, it also has mechanism to friend another player. Friends can only communicate with stock phrases, so there's not too much "Internet leakage" beyond being able to choose a username.

I set it up for my daughter on her Linux Chromebook (I whitelist things I want her to have and everything else is blocked at DNS). Seeing her interact with it the first time, I realized that she spends as much time "adding friends" as doing the typing.

On its face, this activity is pretty harmless. But I am worried about the patterns it might be creating for her. I'm worried about her uncritically engaging with the dopamine hit of getting a new friend. Or how it shapes her idea of how many friends she has or where idea of her self worth comes from. Or what she thinks friends are.

So after that long preamble, here are some questions:

• How would you explain "friends" in this context?
• Would you distinguish them from other kinds of friends, either real or virtual?
• Would you attach a moral component to the activity? E.g. that it is good/bad or helpful/harmful
• How would you frame it to the teacher? Not so much in terms of whether or not they should do it in the classroom, but what kinds of conversations should they be having about the friends experience?
• If I'm asking the wrong questions, what questions should I be asking instead?

I'm really interested in seeing the perspectives people have on this. My own ideas are a bit murky, but I will put them down as a comment.