You can think it is suspect all you want, but that’s the difference between actual knowledge and Googling tidbits.
It is? That’s news to me.
Thank you @NYMomof2!
@sbjdorlo - so glad our sons had the homeschooling option! Agree with you, we needed the time too. Not everyone does though. I would not have, imho. Would have loved to have started college at 16. I was always a book worm, and loved college much more than high school.
'driven internally" Yes. And that can be- but isn’t always- present at birth. It can be something a kid acquires when given the opportunity, not held to those rigid school district guidelines. Just because the school system works for some large percentage of kids, doesn’t mean it’s optimum for all.
A couple of posters here need to learn what good homeschooling is really like. You’ve got posters here whose kids are highly accomplished and grounded. Nothing says they need to be artificially held back to graduate hs at 18 and that anything else is a “rush.” Especially not when they have already exceed what the average bright traditional hs kid has and have already pursued some of the self-determination that college calls for. Nor does every early hs grad go off to a mega competitive U situation. Their achievements, readiness, and ability to integrate into a top college are weighed by adcoms. And, as shown here, by parents.
LOL, I wish I could have just explained to my professors in grad school that I didn’t need to cite my resources because I had actual knowledge!
I did actual research on early college for my PhD program in education. I have more than Google tidbits.
This is one statement most genuine geniuses I knew at my public magnet, the pre 17 year old college classmates, and many immigrant families whose parents/kids had enough experience to make a comparative examination between the educational system in their nations of origin and the average US K-12 school system would strongly dispute based on their own experiences.
From their assessment, they’d agree with what I believe turbo93 said some years back on another thread:
The US K-12 system ON AVERAGE is great for academically average students, but not optimal for the academically above-average/highly gifted.
For the latter group, unless they are in school districts where there are accelerated courses, dual enrollment with reasonably rigorous CC/4-year local colleges with sufficient course offerings for their advanced level, etc…they’d likely end up like some former HS dropouts I encountered with high SAT scores who dropped out due to frustration with the glacial pace of academics and bullying from classmates, classmates’ parents, and sometimes even local school teachers/admins who had serious issues with them because they were much more academically engaged and above-average/gifted and resented them for it.
Agree with @lookingforward and others.
Also wanted to point out that you can find educational studies that say just about anything you want. Much education research isn’t definitive (or even replicable) in the way that we think of research. To be honest, lots of education research is just trying to say that the plural of anecdote is data.
Profoundly and highly gifted students, if a study happened to include one, are commonly excluded from the data as outliers. So, studies on single-year acceleration vs. standard age classroom vs. redshirting are likely to not include highly gifted students, because there is not a similar student in whatever other group to match them against. Long-term studies specifically on outcomes for profoundly gifted students can be counted on about 2 fingers, and the results differ largely depending on how the kids were found for the study. (Find students via references by psychologists, and you find more kids with social issues than if you find kids via Talent Search scores. But, the Talent Search kids perhaps have fewer social issues and more supportive parents than the “general population” of profoundly gifted kids, if you could ever identify that.)
My statement of “The American school system is set up for students who are gifted and highly gifted. It is not set up for students who are profoundly gifted.” is in reference to typical GATE programs. They are setup to identify students who test at around 130 IQ and above. There are many more students who test in the 130-145 IQ range so they can be accommodated. Most of those classrooms are not set up for dealing with a child with 160 IQ or higher because there are so few of them. College is a good option for those students.
Really? Considering that Jesuits have have been known for high academic standards for centuries, that is a rather shallow assessment of education which integrates faith. I find it doubtful that Catholic parents enroll their children in Catholic schools bc they believe their beliefs won’t hold up to questioning. The same holds true for Catholic homeschoolers. It has nothing to do with weakness of Catholic beliefs.
Ooooh I really wish you hadn’t. I would love to read it and refute it. BTW I am a secular homeschooler, educating an atheist child. Religion does not factor into our homeschooling at all, except as part of our social studies or literature curriculum. Although I did not pull my child out for religious reasons, one of the benefits of homeschooling, is that it is hard to be an atheist child in the public school system.
This thread has been very interesting. It has helped me to appreciate much more the value of home schooling. I am still having lots of trouble with understanding why kids would start college early. There is value in going to high school dances and watching high school football and baseball games and going to proms with your friends no matter how smart you may be. It is also unclear how much English and art and music and foreign language he has taken outside of his native languages
If the student has exhausted the academic offerings in high school (on his/her own pace, not because of (tiger-)parent pushing the student beyond his/her natural pace), then, at least in some cases, moving on to college for academic reasons may outweigh any socialization reasons for staying in high school. Also, not every high school student goes to ball games or proms.
In some cases, students can take college courses while still in high school at the local community college or through MOOCs like MIT OCW, but the academically fastest students may even be able to exhaust those offerings at an early age.
Probably at least as much as what MIT expects frosh applicants to take.
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/highschool
Homeschoolers can go to dances, be friends with neighborhood kids, go to the movies or football games with them, play sports on a team, join in on community service projects, audition for an orchestra, take up crafts or martial arts or 4H or work or an infinite number of things. H/S is simply not about denial (except for some who would limit their kids no matter where they attended school.) And “life” isn’t just about what happens in the brick & mortar schools. (A point many top performers aiming for top colleges miss.)
And kids in the traditional high school can do all those things and take their mandated classes in the mandated order, at the mandated meet times- and still not be ready for college.
When there’s an adcom concern about a 16 or 17 year old applying, ime, it’s usually those from traditional hs where it means they miss a year or two within what is a relatively rigid structure. Some have taken all the required courses and done well, but missed the growing opps. That’s different than a kid who has already staked his maturity and independence.
While you and many other folks esteem those factors of HS life, there are many other people who don’t care either way or feel they are “frivolous”. Also, not every HS campus culture or student regarded HS sports or proms as an important factor in their HS lives.
In fact, one major problem many athlete HS classmates in sports other than fencing, tennis, swimming, or ultimate frisbee had at my HS was the feeling most of our HS’s student body didn’t care that much about most sports, didn’t attend their games, and stereotyped them as being of “lesser intelligence” due to a strong prevailing STEM nerd* culture despite the fact we all took the same admissions exam and met/exceeded the standard for entrance.
Incidentally, the junior prom at my public magnet HS when I attended ended up being canceled due to lack of student interest because most at that point in their HS lives didn’t feel it was as important in their busy lives full of academics, ECs, part-time jobs, academic research at nearby 4-year Us, etc…and that was 2 decades ago.
Also, keep in mind some activities like proms are expensive which also can act as a serious barrier. The expense in my view felt so “frivolous” considering my family’s financial struggles at the time that I was quite set on not going to my HS Prom.
However, when my older cousins found out about my decision when asking about my HS prom, they insisted on taking up a collection to my somewhat embarrassment and not only insisted I take the money, but also staunchly refused subsequent efforts to pay them back after college graduation**. Ended up having good memories at the HS prom…but still felt the $90+/person in the mid-'90s wasn’t worth the expense in the context of my immediate family’s financial situation back then.
- Defined as being highly academic engaged and achieving.
** I hate owing others money…especially for expenses I wouldn’t have been inclined to incur if left completely to my own devices.
@tiger1307 One of the decisions a student who chooses early college had to make is whether they want to give up the “high school experience”. For a student who is doing well socially, they may choose to remain in school because they are enjoying their time there. But for others, they are simply spinning their wheels until they can escape. There is no value in high school dances, football games, and other social activities, of you are not someone who is interested in these things in the first place. Not every high school student is involved in traditional high school activities. For many students remaining in place is torture. For kids who simply don’t fit the high school mold they can end up in world of trouble. This can include depression, drugs, truancy, dropping out and other maladaptive behaviors. Remember early college can be seen as an academic placement for a student who just does not mesh with the traditional program.
As I said before early college can be difficult to obtain at many of the Ivies. They seem to prefer a 19 or 20 year old rather than a 15 year old. Also many of the Ivies actively talk about gap years after high school and before college. Another thing to think about is internships. Many companies don’t want 16 year olds as interns the summer after a students freshman or sophomore year. They prefer older kids
@tiger1307 who says early college students need to go to the Ivies? My sister went to a small obscure public college where she was very happy. It was close enough where we could get her and bring her home regularly. There are also colleges that have programs designed for younger students: http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/resources/college_entrance.html
There are many options besides top schools. Not everyone needs to go to MIT or Harvard.
One doesn’t have to apply to Ivies to go to early college. Also, Ivies have and do accept students under 17 on occasion.
I personally know a few including one Singaporean who was admitted at 16 to HYP and ended up being in an interesting situation as one of the few called up national servicemen* to match most of his cohort age-wise…but be one of the few who graduated college…and a renowned elite one no less.
- Term used for males who are called up to serve their mandatory military service obligation as male citizens or long-term residents of Singapore. He ended up having to serve it immediately upon graduation as he was too young to have been called up when he started college.
Not necessarily so. When you see a 15 or 16 year old apply, the vetting changes a tad. Of course, they look for the right maturity and perspective, the right experiences that show the kid can reach out and has. But so many kids at 17-18-19 miss the holistic expectations, so an older one isn’t necessarily more on the mark than a 15 yo. Personally, I’ve never seen a CC discussion of age restricting internships, except for hs kids, though I imagine it could be so. But at many colleges, the research opps start from within, anyway.
The college talk about gap years (other than Harvard’s Z business,) is an endorsement of potentially positive experiences and confirmation that they aren’t biased against a kid who doesn’t head straight to college.
DS17 has no interest in proms or school dances, has never attended a basketball game and has been at football games only when playing in the pep band. These activities are just not on his radar. He is social but prefers to just hang out with his friends, walk around, go to the local pizza place. And he is very active in several bands and an orchestra. He is a high-achieving student but the normal HS curriculum is right for him. The kind of kids who are candidates for early college are on a different planet intellectually, but socially they could be similar in that traditional HS activities do not appeal to them.
Many of the homeschooled high school students in my state go to community college (or even the urban university) while being “homeschooled” (even if they could have graduated) because it is free. I think any hs student can take 2 or 3 courses per semester, so they are getting those courses for free. Some put off applying for the hs diploma until age 19 or 20 because they can keep going for free.
I’ve known a lot of homeschoolers through a friend who runs a huge state organization. I think her children were not well served by staying home. I have no idea if they are on grade for core subjects or not, but I do not think they are well socialized. They do not participate in sports of any kind, took piano lessons rather than being part of a band or orchestra, are too adult in many of their interests and hobbies. The are active in their church and there is some socialization there, but IMO they would be different children if they’d gone to school, had a schedule, been forced to do things in a group, had to treat adults as adults and not as friends. None have gone away to college, and I don’t think there are any plans for them to do that.
OTOH, another family I know had 7 kids homeschooled until hs. The mother was a teacher by training. They were involved in the church, and each child (6 boys, 1 girl) went to the very competitive Jesuit hs, worked at the church (I always saw them doing homework while working the check in desk) were involved in scouts and youth groups, sports, and music. For that family, homeschooling was very successful and I don’t think there was any reason for it other than their mother wanted to teach them herself. The public schools weren’t that great in the area, but there were several Catholic grade schools in the area they could have attended, but they just chose to homeschool.