Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums College Sending a 15 Year Old to College (Need Advice)

We have a thirteen year old high school junior that will be graduating at age fifteen. He arrived at this point via a series of grade skips (three total) and also a year and a half of home schooling (middle school) during which time he subject accelerated by two additional years in math and science. He will have spent four years in high school (having entered as a freshman at age eleven) and is quite socially normal (he is also tall and quite comparably mature to his grade peers).

My question is whether he will be at a disadvantage applying to the most competitive colleges in that his credentials extracurricularly speaking can't really be compared to students three to four years older? High school sports really weren't an option when he entered at age eleven. His other extracurricular activities are on par (academic clubs, recreational sports, volunteering) with his grade peers but nothing particularly special compared to his Ivy bound peers.

By graduation he will have taken 12 AP courses in virtually (all the sciences, BC math, SS, language, etc.) and his CUM will probably place his rank within the top three in his class of 300). SATs are 800M/740WR/760CR with 800's on Physics and Math subject tests.

His high school is quite strong and usually sends five to ten students to Ivy's/MIT/Stanford per year (total, not to each school).

How much of a disadvantage will he be having skipped three grades (and hence lost opportunities to do really special extracurricular types of activities) as compared to his age appropriate classmates? He needed the challenge over all of these years but it would be a pretty big disappointment if he can't attend college with intellectual peers because he was shortchanged his teenage years in high school. Will his age be a "hook" that might compensate for weaknesses in his "resume" or will the colleges simply expect him to be "on par" regardless of his age? Had he never skipped, he would have cruised in as valedictorian and had plenty of time for the extras and would have been bored beyond imagination at school.

I know that there will likely be responses to this post to consider smaller, less known schools (more one on one, could stand out more, etc.) but that isn't what he (or we) want for him. Our primary concern is that his college experience have lots of opportunities to have social experiences with lots of intellectual peers. Grade skipping allowed him to do that with his intellectual peers (age adjusted), but we really feel that a selective "brand name" school is where he will be able to feel at home and really find friends.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Bewildered,
Welcome. I don't post often here, but wanted to welcome you and start the discussion so that you can get (hopefully) lots of advice and perspectives. Our DD's situation is not dissimilar to your DS (grade skip, subject acceleration, young at graduation, taken lots of AP). This has impacted her ability to get involved with some groups due to age cutoffs for volunteer opportunities and jobs. To improve DD's chances of admission, she has taken some targeted actions to add leadership to her volunteer and club involvement and to make sure that she has multiple years of experience with the same groups. All of these things represent activities and interests that she really enjoys and they will also help "normalize" her application. Over the summer, she plans to start applying to colleges. We've convinced her to apply to the classic mix of Reach, Realistic, and Safety schools. Since DD does not have a "compelling personal story" we've gotten advice to look at the GPA & SAT scores for admitted freshmen and use that for determining how likely she is to get in. Yes, she wants to go to a specific top tier school. No, none of us is counting on it. We've watched the older kids at her school and being in the gifted program may help get the kiddos in, but only if they have the grades, activities, and scores to compete on the national level. That said, your son sounds like he will be competitive for grades and scores. Does he have a real passion that can shine through in his applications? He still has some time to really demonstrate his commitment and zeal for that subject or activity. Another thread has been talking about the "parenting arms race" and it is certainly easy to get carried away. That said, most of the students that I have seen get in to ivies do either "have it all" or have a compelling personal story.

You've gotten some great advice already.

I'll just add a few things:
1) Check the college/university websites.
2) Seek further information about specific schools/programs, including possibly using college confidential as a resource.
3) There are books such as
- What High Schools Don't Tell You and other parents don't want you to know,
- What Colleges Don't Tell You and other parents don't want you to know
... offering advice on essays and "packaging".
4) Have your child prepare with questions, also positive statements about himself (similar to what would make good essay material), and make arrangements to visit campus.
5) You may wish to read other threads on the forum about college admissions in general.

Our high school has selective admission and allows to skip a grade upon admission. This is why approximately a half of our graduating class is 16 or just turned 17 by the time of graduation. Our college counselor says that these kids are at disadvantage at top tier schools (and we are talking about just 1 year, not 3!). According to her information, these schools think that younger kids are not mature enough to live and study independently. Moreover, Ivy League admission is almost like a lottery now, so it will be very unwise if you'll choose only from them,their decision may hit your son pretty hard. Backup plan is a must!
So, my advices will be:
1. Ask your college counselor to e-mail the top universities of your choice about your situation, their attitude may vary from school to school.
2. Choose wisely, state universities may be more forgiving, and at the big university your son, being as smart as he is, will always find intellectual peers, there is a lot of smart kids at state schools.
3. Sincerely, I do not think that you can change something for the application to become more attractive for the top schools. Your son definitely bought his lottery ticket, but his age may serve either as a huge disadvantage or as something that catches attention of an admission officer. You will never know, they reject you without explanations.

This.

Feel free to PM me.

My DD14 will graduate (in a few weeks) with a similar profile at 14 and matriculate at 15. We ultimately chose differently, but when she was 13, we were considering very similar things, it sounds like. MIT and HMC were at the top of her list personally, but she also looked at RPI, UVA, Brandeis, Cornell, and a handful of less well-known names.

We wanted her to have access to a meaningful peer group, research and graduate level instruction as an undergraduate, and a small-enough setting that she would not get lost (that's a personality issue as much as a LOG one).

Again-- we've just lived through your next 18mo, it sounds like. Feel free to shoot me a PM about specifics.

I agree. I know 2 kids who got into Stanford last year and one was a start athlete with professional potential and the other was a minority student. My conclusion was that we can't make DD into one of these even if we tried so why worry about it?

Maybe I'm being too negative but I think being a young applicant can be a double-edge sword. It may be a hook in a way that you stand out and it shows academic talent but then the question becomes, what has he done with his talent and what is his passion? Or is he "just" a very good student? It boggles my mind that being a good student or even an exceptional student isn't good enough but I've seen them be turned down from ivies and other elite colleges year after year.

Our recent experience suggests that admissions committees (often of faculty) could care less about student age-- if you don't mention it, they may not really even notice. What that means, of course, is that your child has to truly be that elite among a group of peers who are actually 3-5y older than themselves, though if that is so, then their age generally isn't a deterrent to admission (again, in our experience). Yes.



On the other hand, ad-coms and admissions staff may well raise the issue with a student under 16-17 at matriculation-- and you'll want to search here and be prepared by inquiring rather specifically about any particular forms, extra steps required to satisfy the institution, etc. It turns out that because universities are not able to act in loco parentis, and students this young are very definitely NOT emancipated minors just by virtue of obtaining high school diplomas... this is a bit of a grey or fuzzy area.

Some schools have no real procedure for dealing with it during admissions, and others do.

This is just food-for-thought for you, fwiw. First thought - you can't really change the fact that your ds doesn't have the extracurriculars, but try not to get caught up in that. Apply to where he wants to apply.

Second thought - attending an Ivy was never on my radar as a high school student - not because I thought I couldn't get in, not because I thought I couldn't afford it (which I'm sure I couldn't have lol!), and not because they were way far away from my home state (which they were... but that didn't factor into anything). They simply weren't the schools I was interested in applying to. What I did as a high school student was look at what schools focused on my area of career interest and my passions, and from that list I looked at which schools were the highest ranked, which schools students graduating from in my area were getting the job offers from and which schools offered the most challenging curriculum (and had a reputation for being "hard"). I landed at a terrific school that set me up well for life-after-school in my profession. I was surrounded by incredibly intelligent peers and grad students.

I am always a little bit fascinated by the fascination with getting into the Ivies. I realize it's a big dream for a lot of people - and I have known students in recent years who have dreamed there and gone there But it's not everyone's dream, and not getting into an Ivy doesn't necessarily mean an exceptionally or profoundly gifted student won't be able to find peers at the university they land at. There really are great schools out there that aren't Ivys.

polarbear