And, uh-- not to overstate the obvious here, but NO, not "most" reasonably bright children can do college at 12-13yo.
Just-- no.
Those children who can would be considered BOTH hothoused and HG, probably HG+.
Believe me, we've heard a lot of that kind of rhetoric over the years from people who THINK that we are into pushing our DD to college as fast as we possibly can (on the basis of her 3y acceleration and partially also on her home-based education). They think (and sometimes say) two things-- how could you do that to your child, and just as often-- "oh, my {son/daughter} could have done that, too... but we chose for her/him to be normal."
Two things about that, obviously. Point number one is that they usually have no real concept of how difficult my DD's curriculum is when they're saying it. In her AP English class this year, they read TEN full-length novels/plays, and dozens and dozens of shorter selections... and were expected to analyze/synthesize information about all of it. So no, I do NOT expect that most of the kids that I've seen who are in even regular gifted classes could do that with as little relative effort as it has taken my DD. She's not "the smartest" and I'm not about that anyway-- but I just don't buy that MG kids or bright ones could do it, cognitively and developmentally speaking.
Secondly, we didn't "make" our daughter anything. Not our choice, really, the epigenetics involved in producing this particular cocktail of features. It's ironic in light of how hard we've worked to NOT have a 11-12yo college student how much we are judged for having one who will be 15.
