Below is a reply from another forum, for those interested.
Hi there,
I've visited the Robinson Center several times and met with staff there more than once, but not as a parent. It's a good place. Dr. Nancy Robinson is simply a wonderful person and her staff fully measures up to the standards she and her late husband set for the Center. They do assessment and offer lots of information and other support for parents and gifted kids from preschool through high school ages.
The UW actually has more than one program for gifted teens. The Robinson Center adminsters the Early Entrance Program (EEP), which is for highly motivated junior-high age kids who need to be in college. They get a year of accelerated instruction at the Robinson Center (the Transition School), which moves them through most of the usual high-school-level material in classroom settings. They also get a lot of support outside of class. After the Transition year, they enroll in regular classes and go through college as normal students do, but they have open access to the Robinson Center and its staff, and the various forms of support that the center can provide. (It has a wonderful lounge for the students, both the ones in the Transition School and the ones in regular classes--a real gifted space; I loved just looking in at the door.) Once in college classes, EEP kids usually graduate in four years, so when they get their bachelor's degree they are usually about the normal high school graduation age.
The UW also has a program for high-school age students to come directly to college; I think it's called the Young Scholars Program. As I recall, the EEP would be for ages 12-14 and the Young Scholars for 15-16. The Young Scholars also have access to extra support services, through the Robinson Center.
The Robinson Center also offers academic summer programs for younger teens and I think even for 10-12 year olds.
The EEP is highly competitive, as there is no other comparable program in the entire Pacific Northwest. I know the Robinson Center would love to enlarge it but they don't have the facilities to do so. The EEP does not charge extra tuition for college classes; students pay normal college tuition. The Transition School charges tuition at a reasonable level, and the Seattle City Schools have provided funding for a few students to go to the Transition School year in lieu of being in public school.
[The EEP isn't for everyone. We have a profoundly gifted young friend who declined to enroll in it even though he was found qualified, because he decided he wanted to engage more deeply with the high-school material and have time to travel and learn more about people and how the world really works. That turned out to be a wise decision on his part (he was 13 when he made that choice.) He chose to be home-schooled instead and to travel the world with his family; he had no trouble getting into a good university when the time came.]
In addition to the various Robinson Center programs, the UW has Honors classes that are for all undergrads who are academically qualified to enroll in them.
I found the Robinson Center to be an inspiring place. Here is their URL:
http://depts.washington.edu/cscy/
