<p>I live in NYC. Here, in the public schools, all the kids born in a calendar year start kindergarten together. So, the cut off for kindergarten is December 31. The private schools usually have earlier cut offs. I really haven’t noticed any difference in the college careers of kids with fall birthdays who went to private/public schools, except for athletes, who do often benefit from the extra year.</p>
<p>Otherwise, my kid and others who turned 18 during the first semester of their freshman year do not seem to have had any problems adjusting. I personally think there is a HUGE difference between going off to college at 16 and going off at 17, a couple of months away from one’s 18th birthday. Of course, my kid didn’t miss the experience of being a high school senior, but in terms of the college experience, it mattered not one iota.</p>
<p>S did not turn 18 until nearly the end of his freshman year. To my mind, he was a bit immature (but I probably will still say that when he’s 30). But he’d have gone nuts staying another year in high school. </p>
<p>Lww: your D should be fine going to college at 18 or 19.</p>
<p>Thank you all very much for the great advice! It has been very helpful for me to hear about others’ experiences with this same issue. Hooray for CC :-)</p>
<p>It’s not a question of hurrying. It’s what makes you happy.
College classes beginning in 9th grade were what made high school tolerable for S. His idea of summer bliss was attending math camp. And when he was not in camp, he surrounded himself with more math/science books. I could not picture him not doing math for a whole year. And that can best be done in a university.</p>
<p>I could not have held him back if I had tried. I would not have minded: as a high schooler, he could take or audit the college classes for nearly free. The "good local U’ in our case was Harvard.</p>
<p>It’s also about what you and your kid want to get out of college. Marite’s son is obviously a <em>star</em> mathematician and that’s one of the few fields in which a LOT of <em>stars</em> are young. I don’t think it would all that hard to be a bit on the young side as a math major at a top college because lots of mathematicians do accelerate in school and you’d have a lot of people who were also a bit young in your classes. Moreover, most of the <em>stars</em> go on to Ph.D. programs immediately or almost immediately so they tend to stay in the college environment. And it may not be politically correct to say so, but many, if not most, mathematicians do their best work before they are 40. So, it makes sense to get going early. Stopping out for a year at the age of 16 makes NO sense for a mathematician, IMO.</p>
<p>Someone interested in majoring in business and going on in that field has different issues. Obtaining leadership positions in campus organizations MIGHT–I’m not certain–affect your chances of getting a top job after graduation. And being a bit socially immature would definitely be a handicap. Interviews are crucial in the job search process.</p>
<p>To use another example, if someone wanted to be career military and go to one of the service academies, I wouldn’t want them to do it at age 16. (In fact, I don’t think you can. I think you have to be at least 17 to get an appointment.)I think it is hard to get troops to follow you when you are 21 or 22. Dealing with NCO’s when you aren’t old enough to buy liquor legally would be very difficult I think, especially if you look young. Social maturity is of great importance as an officer, I would think.</p>
<p>So, as with many issues, there’s not one size fits all answer. I remember the debates about starting kindergarten. Friends with kids in private school often told me that having my kid start before turning 5 was “a recipe for disaster.” But my kid was a self-taught reader who was reading books like The Bobsey Twins at the age of 4. It seemed absolutely INSANE to me to keep a kid like that in nursery school for another year. I’m not claiming that my kid was going to be any better student in the long run than kids who were still learning the alphabet; I am claiming that my kid was just ready to move on. </p>
<p>It sounds to me as if the OP’s D IS ready to move on. That’s all that really matters. If ceebee’s son isn’t, that’s fine too. And again, being politically incorrect, most girls mature earlier than boys do socially. I think there are VERY few almost 18 year old females who would feel that they were too young socially for college.</p>
<p>Every child is different. My kid did pretty well in non-math/science classes. He could grow up just as well in college as in high school; probably even better since he would not be distracted by the antics of high school slackers. He never complained about his college classes, but he had a lot of complaints about disruptive schoolmates and unchallenging classes.
Had we lived near B, S probably would have wanted to matriculate there early instead of languishing another year in high school.</p>
<p>Xposted with Jonri: I agree, it really does depend on the child. But one thing S has discovered in college: he’s not a star. There are plenty more who have the same profile and are even more stellar. But if he’s not a star, he’s not a freak of nature either. And that’s all to the good.
Just the other day, I sat across a 4-year old who was whiling away the time playing spelling games with his mom. I was amazed by the number of words he could spell, many of them of more than one syllable. That kid seemed to me ready for kindergarten if not first grade.</p>
<p>I don’t know why it’s taken for granted that early high school graduates lack social skills and team skills. Of the several early graduates from our high school (all went to H or Y),3 have graduated, several more are still in college. 2 are in Ph.D. programs, one is teaching in high school. All were captains of something or other in high school (science team, debate team). They must have had the social skills or leadership skills to make them successful captains. They also had non-academic accomplishments such as in music and dance. </p>
<p>As for the 4-year old, I suspect that he should be in a program that would allow him to leapfrog kindergarten and first grade when it’s time for him to be in school. It won’t be fun being able to read chapter books while your classmates are still learning how to pronounce C-A-T. S’s cousin was considered “possibly ■■■■■■■■” because he refused to sit in circle at reading time. His teacher refused to entertain the explanation that he had already read the book and wanted to read something else, preferably more challenging. His mother had him tested. Verdict: he was gifted. No wonder he was bored out of his skull!</p>
<p>How to do the ‘quote-thingy’: put the word quote within square brackets, with no spaces between the bracket and the word quote, in front of the passage being featured. At the end of the quote, put a backslash/ in front of the word quote and enclose that within square brackets, again without any spaces.</p>
<p>Doesn’t every high school have them? Compare how much time a college prof spends on discipline with what a high school teacher spends. Compare how much learning and teaching actually happens in the same time period in a college and in a high-school classroom.</p>
<p>Thank you midmo…I was wondering how that worked, too!</p>
<p>Lwww, at 18 your D should be fine. For me at 16, I wasn’t ready. Someone asked the reason why. There were several, one being time-management & partying. But the one that really mattered was not having the maturity to deal with difficult situations involving professors. If I had known then, what I know now, I could have had a great lawsuit!</p>
<p>Is being a college leader that important? It sure isn’t for getting admitted into a Ph.D. program.
One became a Rhodes scholar. One was the director of her college’s opera society. Don’t know about the others. S is co-organizer of something totally unrelated to his academic interests.</p>
<p>The important point, though, is that they were not any less mature than the high school mates who must have passed over seniors to give the captainship of various groups to them when they were only juniors. Remember that they were in classes with students in upper grades than they. My S got roped into the Science Team by juniors and seniors when he was in 8th grade, taking AP-Physics with them. They valued his input and did not treat him like a little kid but as a peer.</p>