Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Piggyback on Radical acceleration thread - College

The conversation with the radical acceleration thread is very insightful. We homeschool so DS's needs can be met. I had no idea until we started homeschooling just how much he was repressed in school.

So, which college? I really want him home until age 17/18 so he can experience college - not just get an academic education. Also, by age 17/18, Stanford, Oxford, Harvey Mudd, etc become real possibilities. I had planned "gap" years for deep research time. Of course, I thought I MIGHT have maybe 2 years to fill. No.

Are there advantages or disadvantages to the local community college, local private school (mediocre) or local university (also mediocre) versus the much more stringent state flagship a few hours away? How about taking college level classes for about 4 years or so instead of 2 years and trying to go in a freshman at age 17? Will that option be obliterated?

Thanks.

How much time and effort does he put into extracurriculars? DD is already at 10 hours of dance per week. Mandarin and piano. She gets creative since she is composing. She is in a congregated gifted class, but logs on to do her math and basically does her clubs, friend time, swim team, track etc at school. She needs accelerated work to challenge her but she is spending a lot of time being a kid. Dance because it is her thing.
And she has a large creative project that takes time and energy. I made decisions on where to live, because I could, and I wanted a high school that had easily concurrent college classes. Hence, why Toronto. U of T is in the top 20 schools worldwide. And their gifted high school starts in 7 and you can stay in high school while going to college.

What we chose to do was to allow a bit of leading/independent projects and exploration in strengths, but compensated by hot-housing supporting (non-preferred) skills-- in DD's case, this included things like writing, organization, etc. She was expected to do academic activities that weren't what SHE chose or designed.

That way, she WAS ready to enter college when she was ready, though I realize that statement is vague.

It was at about 10yo that she (realistically) had outstripped the offerings in secondary in her areas of strength (literature, social science) and we supplemented those things by throwing college textbooks her way (I bought old editions on the cheap on Amazon). We considered community college (suggested to us by the local high school, incidentally, about that time), but realized that it was going to provide lackluster academics and few peers, unfortunately. It was cost prohibitive to allow for a la carte classwork at the local Uni (respectable enough-- it's the best research uni in the state).

Between ages 10 and 14, we basically kept her in something of a holding pattern in those strengths while she worked on the areas that still needed refinement to be college-ready. We weren't sure where the arc would terminate when she was ten, but we kind of kept an eye on what wasn't yet "there" and tweaked things as seemed needed about every 3 or 6 months over that 4y period. Mostly, we kept our fingers crossed on the points where maturity was a concern.

She could have done MIT/HMC at 15, I think (and certainly looked competitive on paper)-- but because she didn't have an overwhelming passion for anything in particular going into college, she opted for "free and local, but still highly respectable" instead. As aeh noted in the tandem thread-- our philosophy is that she'll almost certainly pursue graduate studies anyway, and so undergrad is just for accomplishing a general education foundation and figuring out exactly what she wants to do. No big-name school needed necessarily.

Again, I want to emphasize that while this "worked out" with DD15 being more than up to the task of a regular college entry (though she'll be living at home due to age/disability), we definitely didn't have that as a road map when she was ten. CERTAINLY not when she was 7. It could just as easily have turned out that she'd have needed one or more gap years when she finished high school-- starting into that college prep chute without knowing if the parachute would open in time was REALLY scary, and it's been a stressful four years.

We may have done too good a job making her look well-rounded, honestly. She still doesn't really understand how terrifyingly good at EVERYthing she seems to others.

Does that help?

HK, were her strengths in literature and social science or secondary strengths? How did you do math, online?
I have not looked how far you can go with CTY online but now with universities online, does anyone know the tuition range for U level courses in math? I pay 2000 for 9 months of CTY. But I can postpone for holidays so it extends to a 12 months timeframe with breaks.

Honestly, I don't know that I'd say they are relative "strengths" so much as that she is one of those kids who was born old-- and acquired adult level literacy skills quite young. So history and literature just sort of made sense to her. Not sure how else to explain that one.

Math online. Hmm. Well, this has been VERY challenging, as she is not autodidactic enough for anything that we've tried to truly be enough on its own. She's needed parental inputs for math, just because she seems to need a live teacher to bounce things off of. A tutor would have worked, also, if we'd found someone that we could have had working with her (for other reasons that didn't work out).

We were looking-- just across the board-- at in-state e-tuition rates of about $175-600 per quarter hour, depending upon the institution in question. This seemed VERY steep to me, given what students get for this kind of $.

Yes, thanks to all. This is a helpful topic to me. DD is very mathy, so she watches the CTY teaching videos then does the problem sets all on her own. Since she has to take the SSAT for UTS admission, I got Spectrum workbooks to push her ELA. This is where she slacks.
Though all of sudden she will describe the "integrity of wet sand" using language like her father. Something I never did at 9. So I have to get her to practice using it. And essay writing. Problem with technology. Spellcheck, or powerpoint slide projects don't help with writing skills.

We're homeschooling. DS8 is extremely mathy, working through AoPS Intro Alg book at the moment. But he may only be MG in other areas such as verbal/reading, and is not socially skilled.

So here are my thoughts. We don't anticipate early college (maybe 17, but not 15 or less), due to social skills and not being highly advanced across the board. Also we want him to get into an elite undergraduate college, which is much more realistic at regular college age than younger. He could conceivably start earlier at the local state uni, and then go for an elite uni as a graduate student, but I strongly feel he should get with the strongest possible peer group as an undergraduate. (I personally regret going to the local non-elite uni as an undergraduate, even though I did well as a graduate student at an elite uni.)

So how does DS8 avoid early college when he is 5 years accelerated in math? Firstly he's not much accelerated in other subjects, and probably won't be, so early college is not really an option anyway. Secondly, when he finishes high school math he can just continue with college math, while still officially being a K-12 student. He'll probably do AoPS calculus (and take AP BC exam) at age 12-13, and then if possible start taking math courses at the local (decent not great) state uni, and at the end of high school will have covered the full undergraduate math curriculum. If he can then get into an elite uni then that's great, even if he has to retake more rigorous versions of courses he's done. If he doesn't get into an elite uni, then maybe he can complete a BSc at the local uni in about 2 years and then try for an elite uni as a graduate student.

The quality of the local uni is important. Ideally you at least want many faculty who came from elite unis. And you can check the entrance scores of the student body. If there are honors courses that helps. There is one decent uni near us and another uni and a community college near us that are complete rubbish.

This sounds very close to what my husband did back in the 1970's, although in his case there was no AoPS or Egpi so he was just tutored by a college student. For all other subjects he stayed in regular schools. And he started taking classes at the 'local' university by the time he was 14 although in his case the 'local' university was one of the elites. He graduated from university in 3 years since he had so many university level courses. Went to an excellent graduate school & is now one of the top in his math related field. (Even this vague answer seems like I'm revealing too much on a this public form.) Looking back this worked out very well for him.