Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Early college when NOT home schooling.

I'm new here so I apologize if this has been discussed. I did do a search but did not see anything precisely on point.

For reasons outside my control (divorce) I am not allowed to homeschool my 11 year old son. He desperately wants to start college early (age 13-15). His test scores, including a recent SCAT, show he has the ability and I believe he has the correct temperament.

I can not find a school that I think will be a good fit for him. We have to stay in Florida (again, because of the divorce) but I'm just not finding much. Our current school district does allow dual enrollment starting at a child's junior year but my son does not want to wait that long.

Does any one have any creative, work around ideas?

Florida Atlantic University High School is a public high school that admits students to dual enrollment as early as ninth grade, with most graduating from high school with three years of college credit.

http://fauhigh.fau.edu/

Admission requirements:

http://fauhigh.fau.edu/admissions/minimumrequirements.php

Have you looked into whether or not he could use FLVS to graduate early? What I mean by that is to compact curriculum into a 2y sequence, rather than 4y (assuming that your child is currently a 7th or 8th grader). If he is 11 now, you could potentially plan to compact grades 8 through 12 into just 3y. It depends upon his ability to do the additional work, of course. (And yes, some of it is busywork).

Actually obtaining a high school credential before matriculation vastly simplifies some aspects of the collegiate process.

I don't know if you're familiar with this site on early college programs - http://earlyentrance.org/Home. FL doesn't have one or not one listed on this site.

Simon's Rock at Bard College (http://simons-rock.edu/) is one of the few early college programs nationally, but that's located in western MA and your son would have to live on campus there. You'd have to feel comfortable that your son could socially/emotionally living on a college campus on his own. Then, there's the tuition, scholarships, financial aid can of worms that you'd have to contend with.

There are a couple of things which you could try out and see what happens. You could contact a local community college or state college/university and see if they'll allow your son to audit a course. You could enroll your son in some (free) online college courses (MOOCs). MIT is now using MOOCs to identify potential candidates (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/0223/How-colleges-are-finding-tomorrow-s-prodigies). You could also do what HowlerKarma suggests and work on completing the high school requirements first.

Would Stanford's Online High School (https://ohs.stanford.edu/) be an option? That's somewhat a gray area between homeschool and public school.

My ds is a bit younger than yours but we're in a similar boat and I do have sympathy for you.

Thank you all so much! I have a lot more to research now!