How old will your child be when they start college?

pumpkin65
Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:47:14 +0000

Not sure what I was thinking when I had kids in November and December. We are a family of fall birthdays…DH and I were also among the youngest in our classes…my father also.

So, D1 will be 17 when she starts this fall, turns 18 in late Nov. She would have no part of gap year. She wanted to go the kindergarten when she was 4. Tall, healthy, social and precocious. Academically - did well but was not one of the top grads at a highly competetive independent school - but wasn’t far off the mark. Says she can’t imagine going into her senior year right now - though many of the rising seniors are her age or older. I am not sure if things would have turned out radically differently if she had been a year older throughout. I think math is where it is showing up for her, and where it showed up for me. My father took an inadvertent gap year because he accidentally skipped the last page of the Naval Academy entrance exam, took it again after one year of local college, got in; ended up an engineer.

Driving last was a pain - I wish it had been over earlier, it was too much to do junior year. Was not able to get a job last summer because DH and I could not drive her.

She seems mature socially and prepared for college. So, we’ll see how it goes.

D2…our state changed the age cutoff. But, there was NO question she was starting kindergarten when she was nearly 6, regardless of the cutoff changing (health issues, maturity, etc) I don’t see a huge difference in their grades or standardized test scores in each grade though - they are 5 years apart, 6 grades apart. I see things being more effortless for D2; math is easier and she will progress further in high school. Of course, they are different people and it’s hard to compare. D2 has some health challenges; the extra year has been very beneficial for her.

I like the states that have had September cutoffs for many years…I hear the parents say, ‘well, I have an August or July baby and I am holding them back’. And I realize that is what D1 was competing against as she went through the app process last year. A year to a year and a half in ‘teen years’ really is a lot!