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    Joined: Feb 2011
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    Originally Posted by chenchuan
    I don't think that it is easier for a kid 15 or younger to get into top universities. In fact, the opposite is probably true.
    College admission is a game of credentials: academic, leadership, community service, talent, awards, etc. These all take time to accumulate. This puts the kids who skipped a lot (especially in high school) at a disadvantage.
    Yes, I agree.

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    Originally Posted by E Mama
    Yes, CFK these are our opinions and not meant to be "pushed" onto others. Being well rounded is subjective. We feel that excelling in core subjects alone is not well rounded -that is what I meant and it is simply our opinion.
    Of course, to each his/her own.

    Your assumption remains that kids who are entering college are not well rounded. It is a very debatable point but let's just say for a minute we could all agree that being well rounded is a good thing. And, let's say we can agree the definition of being well rounded is excelling across the board in all academic areas, being highly proficient in at least one foreign language, being good at a least one sport, being well developed in at least one area of the arts. There are early college kids who exceed that definition easily. (and of course many kids who enter at traditional age who don't).

    Kids mature at different rates in different ways and families vary greatly in their resources. I'm sure I probably thought at the beginning that with so many things to study college could be put off for ten years. And, then we hit the reality that for our child this was lonely, unsatisfying, and not engaging. That's entirely silly when there existed a perfect solution in the form of a university education.

    So to answer the original poster, we were lucky enough to have a good local college option.

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    Graduating younger is not a way to game the system or increase odds of highly selective admissions. I've never heard of anyone doing it for that reason, but rather doing it as a means to meet the needs of the child to access an appropriate education.

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    Potatoes,

    How old will your son be when he graduates from the local college? Has he thought what he wants to do after that?

    One of the things I tell DD, since she takes Chinese, piano etc. is that I have no idea what she will decide to be when she is 20. And it is my job as parent to give her options.

    Ren

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    I wrestle with these questions too as we are currently trying to decide between homeschool/school acceleration/early college. I have to tell you that the few people I talk to have VERY STRONG opinions against any choice but going to school and staying at grade level. I actually find this a bit annoying as I hate the attitude of sameness. People aren't the same. People shouldn't all do the same thing. Our society can't survive on sameness. If we all become lawyers, who is going to help us when we are sick. Sameness doesn't work. Ugh, I digress. The whole everyone take the same route thing irritates me.

    Having said that, I recently met a 40 something woman who was academically accelerated and started college at 15. In her case, she wanted to be with her peers, but her parents insisted she move ahead and stay challenged. This girl said, she didn't have any friends because college students didn't want to hang out with her and younger kids were busy with their school lives. She ended up not finishing college and dropping out at 18. She did eventually go back and finished a degree at a much later date. She said she wished her parents hadn't done that to her. This was a very sobering story for me. It has been on my mind a lot. I think the key in this situation is that she didn't want to go to college. She wanted to be with friends, but her parents pushed. I think that has to be the difference - a kid pushing versus parents demanding.

    But, I do think having a social group is important. As younger and younger kids go to college, maybe there is a social group that wasn't there 25 years ago.

    These are all random thoughts, please don't take offense. I've been trying to work this all out in my own head as we try to figure out the best route. It is hard to know what to do because it doesn't feel like there are many experts to talk to in these situations.

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    I think that if the kid is ready, they can push for it themselves. There was a kid admitted to Harvard from Styvescant, I think last year, at 15. This kid did all the AP courses offered and decided to apply. Obviously his scores were great.

    Some kids make their own choices at that point. Though I can pressure from parents.

    Ren

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    Originally Posted by Sailing
    Having said that, I recently met a 40 something woman who was academically accelerated and started college at 15. In her case, she wanted to be with her peers, but her parents insisted she move ahead and stay challenged. This girl said, she didn't have any friends because college students didn't want to hang out with her and younger kids were busy with their school lives. She ended up not finishing college and dropping out at 18. She did eventually go back and finished a degree at a much later date. She said she wished her parents hadn't done that to her. This was a very sobering story for me. It has been on my mind a lot. I think the key in this situation is that she didn't want to go to college. She wanted to be with friends, but her parents pushed. I think that has to be the difference - a kid pushing versus parents demanding.
    This would be even further back than that, but my grandmother graduated high school at a similar age. She had an October bd, so she was a bit shy of 15 at the start of her senior year of high school, having skipped 3rd and 5th grades. At that time, there were few advanced education options for women so she went to secretarial school for a while to buy time until she was old enough to look for work and then later get married and have kids. She never expressed any dissatisfaction with the educational decisions that were made in her earlier years, though, and was a really wonderful woman who seemed satisfied with the way things had gone.

    Like you mention, though, I really don't think that her parents were the ones pushing for the acceleration. They were Italian immigrants who likely just went along with whatever the schools were suggesting she needed.

    My oldest will be graduating high school at 16, so not nearly as young as some of your kids, but she plans to attend college out of state straight out of high school. Hopefully we can figure out a way to finance that b/c we really don't have the $ saved and hopefully she won't be so young as to give schools pause about accepting her.

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    Originally Posted by passthepotatoes
    Kids mature at different rates in different ways and families vary greatly in their resources. I'm sure I probably thought at the beginning that with so many things to study college could be put off for ten years. And, then we hit the reality that for our child this was lonely, unsatisfying, and not engaging. That's entirely silly when there existed a perfect solution in the form of a university education.


    Exactly. It was the same for us - why try to find things to fill in some time when what he truly wanted, and needed, was already right there. Some kids are academically strong enough to handle higher level courses but are not socially/emotionally/organizationally/etc. able to handle the demands of being in an environment that is not geared to their chronological age. Some are. Ours is and so the decision to stay on the path we started back when we first accelerated him was an easy one to make when it came to early college.

    I do often wonder why college has been exhalted to this lofty status with many people. On this board it seems like it is perfectly acceptable to accelerate a younger child, say elementary aged to middle school, but its questionable to accelerate a child into college. The biggest complaint on this board is that our children are not allowed to learn at their appropriate pace and level, and we are absolutely apalled when people suggest that we stop allowing our children to learn things so that they don't get so far ahead. We complain that their gifted pullout enrichment activities do not even come class to supplying our children with what they really need. Yet when it comes to early college that is exactly what many people are espousing. If all those supplemental options to delay college work so well than why are't more of us applying those same ideas with our younger children instead of grade/subject acceleration?

    Because for some kids, they don't work. My son has always "needed to learn". He needed to learn when he was 5, he needed to learn when he was 10. At 14, that hasn't changed. Just because he has reached college level doesn't mean that he no longer needs to learn. Of course there are all kinds of experiences and activities outside the world of academics. He participates in those fully, always has. His need to learn never stopped when the school bell rang. But his involvement in those activities doesn't preclude his appetite to further his academic knowledge. I never told him that he had to stop learning when he was in primary school. I devoted (like many parents on this board) much time and energy to getting him where he needed to be. I won't stop him now just so that he can reach an arbitrary age that society has dictated as appropriate for starting college.

    He's been outside of the box his whole life. I guess it will just continue. Not every child can or should attend college early. But it is a valid option, and for a few, the very best option.


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    CFK.
    You mentioned that your son participates fully outside of the academic world. I think it would helpful to us with young children to know what he does, how he does it and where his social life is. This is the age where dating begins and his college mates are probably not going to date him. How is that handled?

    Thanks.

    Ren

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    My DD will graduate from HS when she is 16 and will go to college just before 17. She is every bit the 5th grader now, and fits in according to every standard. This being the case, I cannot imagine that she will not want to go to college with her peers. And because she is so like her older friends, and because I can look back at how I was when I was 16, I have no doubts at all that she will be ready and successful. In fact, she already has a list of colleges that she in interested in going to. Some of her criteria are that it be a mid- to largish-size school that is approximately 3 hours away -- "where I'm on my own but can get back easily for the occasional weekend if I want to." She is a very reasonable and mature child who makes friends easily and has a reasonable plan for her education at this point. The only thing I hate about her grade-advancements is that she's going to leave home 2 years earlier than she normally would (I'm going to miss having her around!), but her school situation is what's best for her all around, and I'm totally confident she'll be ready.

    Interestingly, I'm not as confident that DS7 would be ready to go to college at 16, and that is one of the main reasons we're just sticking with the single skip and subject acceleration, although it's not quite enough. I'm pretty sure he'd want to go to college straight out of HS, and I'm pretty sure we don't want him in that situation. But, as with everything, time will tell!

    I'm a firm believer that each child has different needs and all you can do is do your best to meet those needs, whatever that means.


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