Dottie,
Your DS must have been one of the youngest EXPLORE participants! I absolutely agree, the lower the grade, the more impressive the same results. Aside from grade, I am also awed by a �really young for grade� child who achieves better than average as compared to �typical age for grade� talent search participants.

However, I am also impressed with a typical 12 yo 6th grader who achieves the 8th grade benchmark for science, especially if they are learning on their own while attending the average grade level classroom.

Here�s a link which shows what percentage of students achieve these benchmarks. Apparently, only 28% of ACT participants meet or exceed the science benchmark for college preparedness!

http://act.org/news/data/07/benchmarks.html

I am really interested and alarmed by this data! A local college professor offered to let my son enroll in his physics class (for non-technical majors) last year (when he was nine) because he felt that he had as strong a background in math and science as the high school graduates who attend (not a top 100 school)! I thought this professor must have been mistaken (about my son�s abilities) - maybe I had just overestimated the math and science skills of the average college students.