Originally Posted by smmtvw
I will see about summer programs, that might be doable for us, but I believe he has to be 12 before he can go to the residential ones.
CTY's summer residential programs start after 5th grade, and don't seem to have an age limit for grade-skipped students. What grade is your DS officially in? DD went at 11 and 12 and had a great time.

Originally Posted by smmtvw
As for CTY my child has had a standardized test and my understanding is that because of that I cannot self nominate. Part of my quandary with testing is that he learns algebra 1 almost without trying but tends to score low on standardized tests. I know that can be an indication of 2e, but I think in this case it is test bias. I have never tried to teach all of the things the public schools do, and probably never will.
This is two items: eligibility for talent search, and likely success in the talent search exam. For eligibility, I think you can probably still self-nominate if the tests are a year old. Email and ask if you aren't sure. For likely success, we had DD do the STB spatial tests instead because that's her strength. It's just a set of spatial logic problems and doesn't assess anything you would see in school. (It only qualifies the student for science/math programs.) We were pretty convinced she would do poorly on the typical academic exams. She surprised us last fall when she took the SCAT to qualify for the 7+ programs and did very well.

My DD isn't interested in programming, but the iDTech programs near me get some good reviews. And some bad ones. Something to investigate. They don't have a qualifying exam, which has its ups and downs.

Originally Posted by smmtvw
One of my quandaries is when is it time? I know MIT will take students as young as 15, but I see pros and cons to that. In our current plan my son will earn his AA around 15, give or take a year. So this is also something I have been trying to understand and perspectives would be welcome.
Social maturity was critical to college success, as far as I could see. One young admitee I know railed repeatedly that it was "no place to grow up." Things may have changed since I was there, but in your place I would be looking for ways to keep my DD busy until her 17th birthday. She would have to convince me she was really socially ready to go earlier.