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<p>That’s not true about Terence Tao. He didn’t enter college at 9. if you actually read his site and the articles about him, he is actually very grateful that he was kept in a normal school for as long as possible even though he was accelerated in math.</p>
<p>I’m glad it all worked out for you. Personally, I wouldn’t be comfortable having my 14 year old son living in a dorm with 18-21 year olds. There is a time and place for everything. According to your description, your son has managed an active social life to complement his academic career. My hope is that it doesn’t all come crashing in on him at a later date. Rarely does rushing through “normal” stages of development turn out well. Good luck to your son and may he have a wonderful future ahead.</p>
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<p>Huh?</p>
<p>How do you define “normal” stages of development for those who are anomalies in the population?</p>
<p>I don’t think ten years of idling your brain will do any good.</p>
<p>If “eminence” is defined as someone who is significantly above the rest of the pack and truly does something to “change the world”, I would think that the number of truly “eminent” people is quite low, so no one high school would graduate many people who rise to this definition of “eminence”. Since the base rate of people who meet this definition would be extremely low anyway (how many “eminent” people are there??) it is unlikely that any one high school would crank out a high percentage of these folks. However, I would strongly suspect that many high schools graduate people who become very successful, personally, vocationally and/or financially. “Eminence” does not equal success, IMO.</p>
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Say whaa??? No one here is equating an average person starting a task early with the expecatation that the skill developed will be exceptional. Many kids start piano at a young age, but few are virtuosos.</p>
<p>Anomaly–yes, but still human. Sometimes this fact gets lost by those “guiding” these kids.</p>
<p>By starting college at age 9, I didn’t mean as a matriculated college student, but taking college courses, which I believe Terence was at age 9 (even if just in math, as I am thinking might have been the case).</p>
<p>He wasn’t living in a dorm with 18-21 year olds at age 14. He was a graduate student at 18 and given the choice to live in undergraduate housing (due to his age being closer to that of an undergrad) or graduate housing (since he was a grad student) and he has lived in graduate housing so far (and will be for the coming year as well as he has been on the committees for the new graduate dorm’s dining, furniture, IT, government, etc. and was elected to serve as an executive committee member for the coming year). For the year after that (when he will have turned 18), he is considering trying to get a graduate resident tutor (like an RA job at most dorms) for an undergraduate dorm near his lab or moving to a living community (shared house between undergraduates and graduates off campus). Trust me, had he wanted to live in the undergraduate dorm at 14 (which he didn’t), we wouldn’t have gone for it as we feel graduate students far more mature in general.</p>
<p>“Rarely does rushing through ‘normal’ stages of development turn out well.”</p>
<p>First, if by “normal stages”, you mean going to high school at the typical age and such, there is no research I’ve seen supporting your claim. If you have any, please share. Mind you, I am not saying it might not be the case, but merely that we researched this topic before allowing our son to go the route he picked and the research very much supported the notion that those allowed to accelerate, even radically, fared better academically, in career happiness, in marital happiness (as measured by both divorce rate and self-evaluation), etc. Perhaps you have found more recent research to the contrary?</p>
<p>Second, you are saying these students are rushing through normal stages as if it is something you can really stop and that’s like saying you can stop a kid who is growing very tall for their age to stop growing (well, perhaps you could using some sort of hormone, but would that truly be in the child’s best interest?).</p>
<p>My hope is also that it doesn’t come crashing down on him at some point, of course, but how many people who go to college at 18 commit suicide, have nervous breakdowns, etc? Again, I would say people should worry about the “typical age college population” in equal measure at a minimum (especially as there are so many more such people).</p>
<p>In case I was misunderstood, I wasn’t trying to say eminence equates to success, as I don’t. The person I was responding to asked how many such kids go on to change the world, not be successful. These are very different issues. And in truth, everyone changes the world in one way, if merely by consuming food and water and adding waste. But I gathered that wasn’t what the poster meant there. And my point was that I (like you) think the rate of eminence is extremely low in the general population. However, for those who have started college early (even if merely PT), the rate seems significantly higher, and not just by a small rate of significance. Which isn’t to say most early to college kids will become eminent someday - I suspect most won’t, but that their <em>odds</em> are just far greater than for those who started college at 18.</p>
<p>626, someone was asking just how many early to college kids will go on to change the world, as if starting college early would be some reason they <em>should</em> change the world (even though the person was clearly thinking they have the same or lower likelihood as those who start at 18). I was trying to point out that because someone is capable of doing something early and has a reason to do it doesn’t mean that if given the chance to go ahead and do it, they will become exceptional at it. Again, you and I agree on the concepts, seems to me, but you aren’t quite following my points and I am sorry I’ve been losing you due to not being a better writer. Just as child who starts piano young shouldn’t be <em>expected</em> to become a virtuoso, neither should an early college kid be <em>expected</em> to become eminent (nor feel morally obligated to do such even if the person could, though many disagree with me here, and I say just as a gorgeous person doesn’t have to become a model or movie or porn star to allow society to “profit from their gift”, neither should intelligent people feel they must use their brain to cure diseases and such). But I also am cognizant that the <em>percentage</em> of virtuosos who started playing their instrument young is higher than the <em>percentage</em> who started at later ages and similarly, the <em>percentage</em> who started college early and later became eminent is higher than the <em>percentage</em> who started at the typical time. The reasons are also similar as to why this is. A child who starts music young and sticks with it has had more time practicing in that field in general than those who started later and has been more likely to have some talent to want to be able to continue practicing for year upon year (as eventually, those who were pushed by parents realize they have a choice and can give it up). With the to early college group, they also had to have demonstrated a certain level of talent above average level to have been admitted to college early and done well enough to continue on and they have more time spent in a field (if they stick with the same field they chose when young). I think they have an additional advantage in being young and not having had concepts become so fixed into their heads via time yet, so are more flexible in their questioning things, coming up with solutions to things, etc. (and this is also a reason that it has been speculated that the majority of math and science contributions come from people before they hit 30 and especially 40).</p>
<p>I just want to reiterate my main point, because I think it’s an important one. This is my opinion.</p>
<p>There are many hundreds (thousands?) of 13 year olds each year who could skip middle school and high school, go directly to community college, and earn perfect grades there, go on to 4 year universities, and graduate at 17 or 18. Probably a few hundred 10-12 year olds could do the same thing.</p>
<p>The VAST majority of them would be MUCH better served by going through a regular school curriculum with appropriate enrichment opportunities, especially since so many such opportunities are available now, both in-person and online. </p>
<p>A small minority of that group of students should be accelerated into high school, to graduate high school very early, and then go on to college.</p>
<p>Only the tiniest tiniest minority is well served by entering college at 13. Maybe a handful a year are best served by that option. But I am quite sure it is a very very small number. An exception to an exception to an exception.</p>
<p>As homeschooling grows in popularity, especially for gifted students, we’re going to see more and more and more 14 and 15 year-olds with two years worth of community college work. </p>
<p>My point is, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. There may be some extremely exceptional cases, but as a general rule, rapid acceleration into college has WAY more downside risk than upside benefit.</p>
<p>^^Unless you’ve been through it yourself or had your kid go through it, you have really no idea what a very precocious kid has to go through in dealing with the school district. There are plenty of creative paths that a precocious kid could take and not skip multiple grades, but these paths often aren’t possible because the people in power are not cooperative. In fact, often there is a palpable resentment of these kids from those who are supposed to be facilitating their education.</p>
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Do you have the source of your stats?</p>
<p>I think there are two categories of really bright young people - those that COULD skip quite a few grades (there are probably quite a few of those), and those that are such quick learners and so advanced that spending a dozen years in primary and secondary schools would be a completely frustrating waste of time.</p>
<p>Most of the former are probably best served by a conventional approach. By staying with a similar-age peer group, they can have a normal social life, participate in competitive sports, and earn the academic accolades that will help them get into the college of their choice. While they might survive in a peer group that’s, say, three years older, they might not do as well academically, they won’t have the same social life, and they aren’t likely to be competitive with their peers in sports.</p>
<p>For the small group of kids that are so far at the right end of the bell curve that even the most challenging tracks would be insanely boring, I think you have to throw the rulebook out the window and try to do what will keep the kid engaged in learning. No, it’s not going to be a typical or “normal” experience, but it’s probably better than forcing the kid to sit through what would seem like an extended kindergarten with his peers. Obviously, it will take effort to maintain a social life - that, too, won’t be typical, but it should be possible to socialize the kid well enough to allow him to develop a healthy social life in the long run.</p>
<p>One thing about prodigies - as they age, they get more “normal.” A kid getting a PhD at 19 seems quite exceptional, but a 29-year old computer designer, prof, etc. will be measured on his merits, not on when he got his degree.</p>
<p>I’d note that the world of classical music has many superstars who did the musical equivalent of the academic accomplishments described in this thread. Do all musical prodigies turn into sought-after soloists? Probably not, but I’d guess a greater percentage do compared to musicians with less accelerated training.</p>
<p>The most important part of kenf1234’s post is this:</p>
<p>“This is my opinion.”</p>
<p>Note that there is NO <em>research</em> that I have seen that supports his suppositions and that again, I am interested (not even merely open to, but interested) in seeing evidence on his side. I want to reiterate this point as I also feel it is an important one to stress. Those who are anti-early college time and again are going by their <em>opinion</em>, often based on anecdotal evidence if anything more than “gut feeling” and they are certainly welcome to their opinions, but it should be realized that’s exactly what they are - opinions. That and $5 today will buy one a cup of coffee. It’s not really all too helpful in deciding what path would be better for a child. About 20 years ago, people had much the same “notions” about homeschooling (indeed, even with lots of research dispelling the myths, many go on to judge it as a bad choice) and for much the same reason - small sample size at the time and lots of people who had actually read any <em>research</em> on what they spoke (in part due to their being very little done yet to read, but in larger part because the people spewing the criticism wanted their children going the typical route, had gone the typical route themselves, and honestly didn’t want to have to consider if they could have gone a better route or if their children could have). Being that homeschooling is not the norm (not even today - I believe still only 2% of school-aged children are homeschooled in America), I can’t help but think the large majority of parents who go this route have researched the options rather carefully and tend to be thus better educated than those who merely feel “Traditional education was good enough for me, so it is good enough for my child.”</p>
<p>But let’s say there was research to support the notion that early college was actually having more negative results than positive ones. Does this necessarily mean nobody should go the early college route? Not necessarily as certain paths work better for the minority than the majority (which is also why it’s fine for parents to still have their children in a traditional school despite evidence showing homeschooling has more favorable results when it comes to the person’s academic success as measured by standardized exams and college GPA and retention rate in college, career success in terms of things like percentage who are on welfare as adults and who own businesses and such, who have children out of wedlock, who need mental health visits, etc.).</p>
<p>Now I agree with kenf that there are likely lots (I would say thousands) of 13-year-olds each year who could skip middle and high school and go directly to a CC - and I’d add even a 4-year-university (I’m away from home and don’t have talent search data handy, but am thinking thousands of kids score in 4-year-university SAT zone at age 12 each year and even if they scored a bit lower, a 950 out of 1600 SAT score at 12 shows a higher intellect than the <em>average</em> college student has; not average ton ten college, mind you, but average for all 4-year-universities in the USA). However, I disagree that most of those would earn perfect grades there. I know a bunch of kids who started CC early (and also college) and many if not most don’t have perfect grades, and this is with kids who are not just the “moderated gifted”, but even “profoundly gifted” set. But does that mean they should wait till they can get perfect grades to go to college? I seriously doubt it. We don’t make 18-year-olds wait till they can get perfect grades to attend college (most would never get to attend if we did), so why should younger people be held to “perfection” here (or anywhere)?</p>
<p>I also agree with kenf that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Our son asked to start college at 6, and it’s conceivable that he indeed could have done just fine or better at age 6 in college based on his testing at 7 and how he has done in college and graduate school (as bookends here, he was in the top 1% of the 300+ registered pre-med bio course section in a school that had more students in Harvard’s Med School class that fall than any other college except for Harvard itself, and nobody in the 200+ registered other section of the course that semester had a higher score than he and this was his very first college course just after he turned 9, so he didn’t even have much test taking experience nor did he had the pre-reqs of a year of high school chem and a year of high school bio, and as the other book end, he just got his master of science at MIT at age 16 with a “perfect” 5.0 out of a possible 5.0). But we “held him back” from starting college three years, and went cautiously even then. Similarly, he likely could have been admitted to graduate school at 13 (being that he was admitted at 14 and hadn’t done any research or classes in the year between finishing college and starting grad school), but we again convinced him to wait a year between college and graduate school (and feel the consulting work and travel and such he did during that year was perhaps more “educational” than any formal education and so are glad he had those experiences). He also could be getting a driver’s license now, but he is in Boston and using public transportation makes more sense than paying to buy, maintain, fuel, park, insure, etc. a car at this time, so he could be waiting years before he bothers to get a driver’s license (my own parents were in their 20’s before they got their licenses, at least 22 and 28, as they lived in NYC and similarly had public transportation making more sense for them; never hurt them any to wait). One has to look at the <em>big</em> picture as best they can (as nobody will see the entire picture no matter how hard they try) and make choices.</p>
<p>What specifically are the WAY more downside risk than upside benefit, if anyone cares to elaborate?</p>
<p>Roger, your post is in complete agreement with my own take on things (and I also made the same comment about musical prodigies in an earlier post).</p>
<p>It’s true that as early to college people age, they get more “normal” in the sense that they blend into their educational and work groups more easily. My son certainly stood out as a 9-year-old reporting to a tech company M-F over the summer, but not as a 13-year old in a different tech company where they had no clue of his age till he had been there a few months and a university EE told someone at the company (as the job was an internship through the university, only the university needed the special exception for employment paperwork as the tech company paid the U and the U paid our son). He also stood out in college at age 9, but at age 16, his students - who were graduate students as this was for a graduate class - had no idea their TA was even younger than they were…indeed, one nearly 24-year-old thought for sure our son was joking at a party the following semester when it came up in a conversation about early education stories that he was 16 and it had to be confirmed by the party’s host who knew our son from his first fall semester a year and a half prior and they were in a course together.</p>
<p>However, I do think these early to college students, at least if they are extroverted and/or speak in group conversations much, will always stand out as “not normal intellectually” just as my brother (who I am rather certain is “profoundly gifted” and never did an early college option ever even cross anyone’s mind for him as we just hadn’t heard of it back then) is noted as brilliant by anyone who chats with him for even a few minutes at a party (and he’s middle-aged, so it’s not a matter of being precocious at this point). There simply are certain people who, so long as a disease or accident doesn’t alter the picture, will always “stand out” in any crowd, no matter their age.</p>
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<p>Each person’s situation is different. Most important is safety and happiness of the child. That comes first. Whatever you need to do to accomplish that, you need to do, and that will be different for each child and each educational situation.</p>
<p>However, finishing early is not a goal in-and-of itself. Going to a community college and transferring to a mediocre university is not a great outcome, but it is what is going on in a lot of these cases. In that case, the kid is NEVER with their intellectual peers. Better to stick it out as long as possible to end up at as good a university as possible, if safety and happiness of the child can be accomplished in the process.</p>
<p>That is my main point. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.</p>
<p>Ken, I hope we someday can sit down and have a beer together (or a lemonade or whatever suits your taste, as I realize plenty of people aren’t into beer). On many major points, we agree, like a child’s safety and happiness are far more important than when someone finishes a certain form of education or even <em>if</em> they ever finish a certain type of education. The problem is these issues are not like knowing 1 + 1 equals 2. It’s hard to know what is a reasonable level of safety, for example. Some adults never fly, fearing it isn’t safe, and even more would never jump from a plane (myself included, at least till I am either in my 70’s or terminally ill, whichever comes first) even with research showing that airplane travel is about the same risk <em>per hour of human involvement in that form of travel</em> as train, boat, and car and research showing that riding a bike is actually is <em>more</em> dangerous based on number of fatalities per hour a human engages in the activity as we just aren’t comfortable with the notion for whatever reason. Our son wants to both pilot a plane and jump from one, and despite my knowing the <em>odds</em> are he’d be fine in either, I’m not comfortable with either and he’ll have to wait till 18 to do those, though I don’t look down on my friends whose kids were flying planes as young teens.</p>
<p>We also agree that finishing early is not a goal in-and-of-itself. If we had that mindset, we’d have allowed our son to apply to college at 6, grad school at 12 or earlier (a mentor wanting him applying at 11), encouraged him to apply to the MBA or JD before the MS/PhD (as it would be more likely to "set age records), let him apply to grad school of some form while still a senior in college (especially as that could have left open the possibility of a $300K Jack Kent Cooke for funding and while he is fully funded for the MS/PhD by MIT, he’s currently got a hankering to attend Harvard for the MBA and JD and there is no school merit aid for that and I am guessing won’t go just because he refuses to take tuition or living expenses money from us and refuses to take loans for anything other than real estate or a business start-up (well, unless you count using a credit card, but I don’t as he pays those off in full every month and so isn’t truly using them for “loans” so much as convenience).</p>
<p>As for the kids who “go to community college and transfer to a mediocre university”, I don’t think most do that. I know people who started college very young at CC’s and have gone on to top tier colleges for undergraduate school (for example, Carnegie Mellon is where one of my son’s favorite friends since age 8 went, though he was 16 by the time he moved to PA on his own; I am thinking the guy we met who started undergraduate school at MIT at age 14 in the late 90’s had some CC credits under his belt first, but am not positive). But going to a “mediocre university” - by which I suspect you mean not in the top tier - is not the end of the world. My son went to a third tier college and he <em>did</em> have intellectual peers there. He has noted that some of his friends from his math courses and philosophy club at his third tier school are more intelligent than a majority of MIT students (as in these “no name U” students were indeed equal to those in the top 10% of the students at MIT). It’s not like the entire student body will be intellectual peers, but that’s not going to be the case even going to a top U for some kids and even at a young age and again, not the end of the world as you don’t need to hang out with everyone in any given school. Do most workers hang out after work with every employee in their company? Do they feel remorse due to having a few friends at work that they do things with outside of work rather than doing things socially with every EE?</p>
<p>Our son’s education hasn’t yet ended, so I can’t say where he’ll “end up”, but he is currently at the U that was ranked number in all four areas of his study (math, CS, physics, and engineering) when he started at MIT (Princeton this year is ranked first in math and MIT is second, and our son is not at all upset by this change, nor are we parents), so it’s not like a different path where college was delayed longer than it was would have gotten him to a better doctoral program eventually. And I feel the third tier college actually had a LOT of benefits over MIT, to be honest, and am quite glad he had that undergraduate school’s experience in retrospect (even though it was only chosen due to being close to our home at the time).</p>
<p>I agree that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I also feel just because people think you can’t doesn’t mean you can’t and just because some people will frown upon your choice doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still go with that choice.</p>
<p>Lazybum-
Re: post # 51- you didn’t “lose me” - you seemed to be claiming that your lower income high school didnt produce as many “world changers” as other schools. I was merely talking about base rates (eg Baysean statistics)-- that most schools, due to the low frequency of “world changers” would not be expected to produce many of these kids. You seem to claim that the “world changers” come predominantly from upper or lower classes- with comparatively few from the “middle class”. Where is this hypothesis from? If there is data, does it correlate with the ever-shrinking middle class?</p>