Just throwing in here that Pomona College’s new President Gabrielle Starr went to college at age 15 and on to an impressive academic career: https://www.pomona.edu/administration/president
@roycroftmom, I’m now somewhat confused. In your first post you strongly objected, saying your husband went at 16 and wouldn’t let your kids go to college so early. In your later post you state, “She will do fine at either, almost everyone who enrolls will graduate. It won’t be the same experience she would have 2 years later, but it will be ok.” What caused the change of attitude? I would be interested to know.
@roycroftmom, I admittedly do not know much about women’s colleges (save what I hear from those who attended, including my mother and others of her generation) but I thought at least there would be much less chance for on-campus assault and much fewer unhealthy parties, since women would be in control of the social spaces. Social spaces supervised and controled by women usually have less issues with gender abuses than those supervised by men, according to the research I’ve read. That’s what I meant in saying they were relatively protected.
@massmom2018, you did an extra year of school in Spain. What did you study? Did you study with Spanish students or other English-speaking foreign students?
@Gopies, look into Rotary Club international exchange programs. They’re academically competitive – which your daughter is – and funded, so you will NOT be paying that $13-15K. Best of all, Rotary Clubs tend to place their students with other Rotary Club homes - these are business owners, the living arrangements are comfortable and safe.
I don’t think you’ll find Smith safer than Amherst or Williams. I also didn’t find Smith warm and fuzzy…
As I said above, my 16 year old felt intimidated at the parties she was taken to at Smith. Definitely offered alcohol, drugs, and sex.
FWIW I knew a guy (which I think would only exaggerate the age difference over a girl IMO) who was 16 when he started at Brown but turned 17 in his freshman fall and frankly I don’t think anyone would have known if he hadn’t said anything.
No public school can force a child to skip two grades. That is a clear violation of her civil rights. Since you and your wife didn’t want it to occur and this was forced on your family, you should contact the US DoE office of civil rights. A simple call from one of their lawyers will allow your child to progress along with her age appropriate peers if that is your desire.
@SwimmingDad, I appreciate your sympathy and recommendation but it’s too late to do anything. With the unapproved promotion, had we protested, they would have forced her to miss days of classes to take the tests. If we protested now, she would just be, in essence, “held back” a year, which would be social death for her. All of her classmates would wonder why. She’d be very negatively affected.
@iwannabe_Brown, that’s nice to know that a 16-year-old boy (and yes, boys usually have more trouble with promotion than girls, as research has shown) could fit in. I’ve told my daughter that she could consider affordable gap year ideas (like NSLI-Y) but if that doesn’t work out and she wishes to, we trust she’d be alright in college, and where she’d choose to go to college. And if she wants to stay at the local college for a year before she heads off, that’s fine, too.
@Gopies, As I get older I become more convinced that “age is just a number.” 
I don’t have insider information on the culture at Dartmouth (except the stereotypes), but from the experiences of my son and many of his friends who attended Williams, I don’t think that your daughter would have an issue socially at Williams or other academically rigorous LACs.
Williams’ residence hall entry system fosters an immediate and automatic social group and the unpaid Junior Advisors offer advice and a soft shoulder for adjustment issues. Professors are nurturing and accessible. The tutorial program is extraordinary. Winter Study – the month of January – is a fun and relaxed break from the academic pressure and an chance to learn something out of the ordinary.
I hope that your daughter will have a balanced list of reach/match/safety schools. This is important for all applicants, and I would think more so in her case since it’s hard to predict the schools’ reaction to her age.
I would also suggest pursuing a two pronged approach: Apply next year, but also formulate a plan for a gap year in the event that she’s disappointed with her acceptances or changes her mind and decides to defer for a year. Gap years (which are really more like 15 months) absolutely do not have to be expensive or lonely. The best approach in my opinion is combination of 3 or 4 different segments, each built around a different focus. E.g., learning, travel, community service, minimum wage work.
You have another year to research gap year opportunities. I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with a structure that minimizes the negatives.
so i really know absolutely NOTHING about the two schools you are interested in.
but my thoughts are this (having 4 bright kids; average age: 17.)
at some point your daughter will have to go through a socially strange year or two. Either by repeating a year in HS (who are your friends??) ; taking a gap year (No one is around), doing an abroad year (perhaps lonely in a new setting); or going to college early (being left out or ignored).
i just asked my 16 YO and 19 YO about going to college at age 16. My 16 YO was like “YES!!! I WOULD LOVE It!!!” that’s because he’s visited his older bro who is in a frat. His 19 YO sister shook her head. She said “No way. Boy or Girl, he or she’d be way way too immature.” Think: tag-a-long. Her thoughts: take college classes from home for a year, start at a live-in campus as a freshman at age 17 (although having many hours already accumulated that she’d be a soph or junior). That sounds good, but merit scholarships would be out that way.
As someone who works with students, you know what they are like. Would a young kid fit in? Would it be any different at an elite school? Those few years - between 15 to 18 – are big growing years for boys and girls alike. The changes we’ve seen in our own kids during those years are staggering.
good luck with decisions in the next year.
My father started college at 12. My son started at 14. Not optimal ages to be in an unsupervised environment because they are still about the emotional maturity of their age group. Your daughter may be different. In our local public school system, the HS must provide college tuition in the case that a student exceeds the level of courses at HS. A friend of ours took advantage of this with their gifted child who attended mathematics classes up to graduate level on the public dime at our local uni.
That might be an option for you.
No change of opinion. Your daughter will graduate if she enrolld but I believe her experience will be much less than it could have been had she waited. I would never allow my child to do that to herself.
Since people are sharing anecdotes: I know a young woman who started college at 15. Her parents insisted the school was small and had experience in dealing with much-younger students, and chose a good little LAC in the midwest. She graduated at 19, spend a year working, and began medical school at almost 21. She’s now a doctor at a local hospital. She was OK with her college experience, but did admit she would have had more fun had she waited… her classmates were friendly but she really didn’t have true friends until her junior/senior year. Her first year and a half+ was lonely.
My sister started UCLA at 16 and was absolutely overwhelmed. Always a great student, she simply wasn’t used to pushing herself academically. Everything came easily to her - until college, when she had to really work hard. The relative lack of oversight and structure didn’t help either. She ended up flunking out by the end of her freshman year and she didn’t restart college – at a California state university – until a couple years later.
Your wife is right. Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe with high crime rate and not a whole lot to see besides nature and lots of wineries. Russia is much better but I still won’t send a 16 year old there for more than a summer.
What does your daughter want to do? Does she feel she will be ready for college next year? I understand that you can’t afford an expensive gap year, but I think a gap year of some sort would be a good solution. It will keep her mentally challenged and give her the gift of time.
Besides going abroad, there are so many ways a kiddo might spend a valuable gap year!
She could work part time (or volunteer) while doing quite a bit of self-studying – like, a self-paced “Great Books” course through audio/online classes and reading at home; or give herself a course in American film following AFI Top 100 lists. Your daughter is self-studying Russian? How about a year of reading Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Turgeniev and Pushkin? Tell me that wouldn’t make for a fun college essay: my year as an autodidact. Top schools could love it… just sayin’…
I lived with a Spanish family and attended a public Spanish high school. You could choose the literature track or science track. I took literature–my grades didn’t count thank goodness. It is hard to go to school in another language! It was fantastic. My son will hopefully go next year as he graduates high school in June. Afs won’t take him for high school because he will have already graduated high school so we are trying YFU. He is going through the college application process and will defer for a year.
sorry this was for Gopies