Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Should I go to college out of state?

I'm finishing up my junior year of high school, but I actually should be graduating this year. My birthday's in 2003 in the first week of October and the state where I live has a winter cutoff, which means that I was supposed to start Kindergarten in the fall of 2008. However, because my parents didn't have a lot of confidence in me, they waited until the fall of 2009 to send me. All through school, I've felt embarrassed about being a year behind, and out-of-place for being more than a year older than some of my classmates. The thing is, though, that most states have a September cutoff, which means that in most states, I wouldn't have been allowed to start Kindergarten until the fall of 2009. Thus, by the standards of most states, I'm in the right grade. If I went to college in a state with a September cutoff, I'd be exactly in the year I'm supposed to be in, and there wouldn't be anything weird about turning 19 in October of my freshman year, since that's the norm for October-born people in that state. I'd still be one of the very oldest, but I'd still fall within the standard age range for my year. I know this seems crazy, but lately, nothing has been more important to me than being normal and fitting in.

Welcome, Sziib!


The interesting thing about age is that it is not the first characteristic people notice. Other students on campus, classmates, and potential friends may more instantly notice if one is tall or short, round or thin, and the level of respect and self-confidence one conveys by their posture, body language, and demeanor.

You are not alone. Many students are "redshirted" as you were, and for some this extra year of growth before starting school provides:
- an advantage in sports, and/or
- a potential opportunity to enter a gifted program, and/or
- time to adjust to family changes (such as parents moving, a new job, and/or a new baby in the house), and/or
- a variety of homeschool activities (field trips, pre-school swim classes, dance classes, T-ball, etc) to explore interests, and/or
- time for motor skills development or practicing social skills and other compliant and non-wiggly behavior routinely expected in classrooms.

Meanwhile some students are grade accelerated in order to find the best fit of curriculum and pacing.
With a combination of redshirting and acceleration, there may be a variety of ages in any given classroom.

Age doesn't matter. Or, to repeat an old saying:
"Those who mind, don't matter; those who matter, don't mind."

Being normal and fitting in is generally related to the art of conversation:
- engaging in small talk,
- being observant and thinking of positive things to say,
- asking questions without being invasive/intrusive, and
- finding things in common with people, regardless their age.

My advice is to choose your college based on:
- what you want to study,
- what you can afford,
- the campus atmosphere.

Adding a link to a recent post with quotes about the folly of batching students by chronological age.

I can understand why this issue is important to you, but would guess that it would not even cross the minds of most people that you would meet in college. Is it common to take a gap year before college in the US?

Here in Australia, there are many who take a gap year, many who transfer between courses & Uni (thus starting twice as first year students), and many who are mature age students. My colleague’s partner started the same course with my daughter.

PP have brought up much more important points than this, but I do want to point out that not everyone who attends your in-state colleges also attended K-12 schools in the same state, so there very well may be other incoming freshmen who attended school under the September birthday cutoff most common in the rest of the country (about 2/3s of the states during the time frame when you would have been entering kindergarten). Also, other countries have different practices for school entry and for how long pre-college education (and other activities, such as compulsory military service) last.

(And there have been a number of charming little news stories over the years about colleges graduating a very young student and a very mature student in the same class. A milder version of this story happens every year, in nearly every university, to much less fanfare.)

On another note, I've been reflecting about some of our graduating seniors, and a few in particular come to mind: over the course of this year, I've worked with a handful of 12th graders who could be described as having some level of giftedness in some domain of intellect, ranging from moderately to profoundly gifted. (All twice exceptional, of course, given my day job.) They are heading off to a range of post-secondary options, not necessarily aligned with conventional expectations for intellectually gifted learners, but in accordance with their choices and who they are holistically. Some are already nineteen, one turned seventeen this school year, and the remainder are the more-expected eighteen. The older ones may have been retained, or held out/red-shirted, sometimes at much later grades than kindergarten. At no point during their high school career has age been the most important way anyone has looked at them, and now that they are moving on into adulthood, it will become even less important. None of the 19-year-olds have had obstacles related to their age while here, and actually struck me in our final interviews as being noticeably more mature and thoughtful about next steps in life than many of their classmates--something which I believe these particular young people will use productively in their post-secondary lives.

I'm not a fan of either retention or red-shirting on general principle (we can talk about the research/group data on another day), but ultimately these kinds of placement decisions are what you make of them--initially how parents communicate the decision to their children, and eventually how young people choose to frame their own lives moving forward. I don't know your parents, but as a parent, and someone who's worked with a great many parents of school-age children, I can say that most parents do the best they can for their children with what they know at the time. We're often wrong, but usually not ill-intentioned. Whatever the situation with your family, the next stage of life is going to be almost entirely about your choices, and what you do to find your fit as a whole person, not just on the basis of a number that says almost nothing meaningful about who you are essentially.