In 1974, Tsung-dao Lee, a Chinese-American physicist who won the Nobel Prize when he was just 30 years of age, suggested that China should offer university places to talented individuals at an early age.

However, it wasn't until 1977 - when the gaokao, the national university entrance exam, was revived after being suspended for 10 years - that the authorities began to seriously consider the suggestion.

In the same year, a professor from Jiangxi province wrote to Fang Yi, a vice-premier and president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to recommend that a talented 13-year-old boy named Ning Bo should be given a university education.

Fang asked professors at the University of Science and Technology of China to assess Ning's talent and potential, both of which were confirmed via exams and interviews.

The professors realized that there were probably many more ultra-smart youngsters in the country, so they started a nationwide search, which unearthed 20 talented children.

The recruitment process ended in March 1978, with the youngest student being just 11, according to the archives of the Class of the Gifted Young.

The initiative, the first of its kind in China, was considered a major innovation in the nation's higher education system, according to Yin Min, Party chief of the School of the Gifted Young, which is part of USTC.

In the autumn of 1978, a second group of more than 60 talented young students was admitted to the university and the two groups were combined into one class.

USTC was established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1958 in Beijing as part of a strategy to meet the country's science and technology needs and raise China's international competitiveness.

Many alumni of the university, which moved to Hefei, capital of Anhui province, in 1970, are CAS academicians and some of China's most qualified scientists.

In the 1980s and '90s, key universities only accepted about 10 percent of regular postgraduate applicants, while more than 70 percent of students from the Class of the Gifted Young - the predecessor of the School of the Gifted Young - passed postgraduate enrollment exams for universities at home and abroad.

"The 'brain drain' is not our top concern because we should never interfere with the graduates' choices," said Jiang Yi, deputy Party chief at USTC and a former dean of the academic affairs office.

"What we care about most is how to give gifted younger students the education they deserve," he said.