At least two of my kids will finish high school early, and we won't encourage them to start college immediately, though we'll probably let them if they want to. The idea is to give them time to explore the world a bit before they have to start thinking seriously about what they want to do with their lives.
This will mean any of the following or a combination of things:
- Get a job (part-time or full time)
- Enroll in a local community college and explore courses there (Astronomy? Physics? Pottery? etc.)
- Do an internship at a company or in some exotic place
- Start something up by writing some software or whatever
- Study overseas at another high school and learn/improve other languages.
- Other?
FWIW, my eldest has skipped two grades (and is at a new school), and socializing with classmates isn't super-easy for him right now (this is a kid with very good social skills). We've made it clear to him that delaying college will fix this problem. It'll be up to him to decide what's most important for him: college immediately or the other options.
The age-gap problem is, for me, another big problems faced by gifted kids in American schools. The lack of choices in the vast majority of schools means that staying with agemates or near-agemates and being challenged appropriately is rarely an option.
