Originally Posted by Peony2
Studying CTY SET kids (SAT math >= 700) suggests that appropriate acceleration doesn't just get kids "to the same place, just sooner", but rather boosts kids onto a higher career trajectory -- more productive, more pre-eminent track -- for their entire careers. (For the kids studied, this was especially true for boys -- for girls in the earlier times, effects seemed to be moderated by the girls' tendency to veer into less mathematically based careers.)

"When Less Is More: Effects of Grade Skipping on Adult STEM Productivity Among Mathematically Precocious Adolescents", Park, Lubinski, & Benbow
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Park-Lubinski-Benbow-2013.pdf

The study was looking at whole grade acceleration, comparing matched kids who did grade-skip vs. those who could have but didn't. I know that's not the situation and question you're asking about -- you're asking not about whole-grade acceleration but rather about a situation where an enriching/accelerating math summer may put your kid further out-of-sync with the school math curriculum. Nevertheless, I bring up this study as it suggests there can be significant lost opportunity resulting from holding mathematically gifted kids (back) "on age track".


I glanced through the paper. It is an interesting read, but I *strongly* disagree with the conclusion. Many metrics that the authors used, for example, age to obtain PhD/MD/JD, to publish the first paper, total citation at a certain age, are not that meaningful when we consider the age bias. And frankly, grade-skipping is a self-selecting process. Kids do not skip a grade unless they are academically capable. The numbers do not tell all the stories.

I am saying this because I was a among a group of 200 kids who entered one particular college at 15 years old and younger in the 90's. Most of us got our BS/BA under 20. Not knowing what to do, we went on pursuing PhDs. We are all in our late 30s and early 40s now.

True, almost all of us have advanced degrees, many from prestigous universities. But only a few still work in science. Some of us are just not equipped with the other skills that are necessary to be successful in academia, where the success is evaluated in this paper.

Academic capability is one crucial factor of future success. But its importance should not be overblown.