The internet is full of advice against skipping one year in high school. But what happens to the ones who were successful in doing so?
If you have APs, Dual Enrollment, extra curricular activities, and feel mature, do the Ivies still penalize you with less chances to get in?
I would like to hear positive experiences. Please share. Thanks
Many selective colleges admit a few of 16-year olds, 15-year olds. even 14-year olds every year. For example: https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/piscataway_15-year-old_girl_he.html
I went to MIT at 17. I don’t necessarily recommend it. If your child “feels mature” then perhaps (s)he is ready, but then again… if my child were able to get into MIT after junior year of high school, I would strongly urge deferring admission for a broadening/maturing gap year experience, such as an AFS year at an overseas high school with sufficient advanced offerings to continue his/her academic progress while providing a wonderful growth experience. JMHO.
However you have to be a young genius.
You see so few stories because graduating early is a bad idea. It’s a marathon. Don’t run out of breath early confusing it with a dash race.
Thank you for your reply. Do MIT and the Ivies allow deferring admissions in general or it is something considered special?
To the best of my knowledge, gap years are encouraged. Princeton University was one of the first schools to openly encourage accepted students to take a gap year.
Yes, most super-elites allow and even encourage gap years, as long as you don’t attend another college or university. A post-grad year of high school, as many AFS students do, is fine as far as I understand, though of course you’d need to verify in the specific case, depending on how advanced coursework would be handled in that setting.
https://mitadmissions.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1556453-deferred-enrollment
As a general rule the Ivies do not like students who skip years. It has to do with emotional maturity to be away at college
Yes, top schools encourage (meaningful) gap years: study abroad in high school immersion, for instance, working, volunteering full time for an organization or a campaign…
Please supply a link for that advice, as this has not been my personal experience. Over the past ten years, I’ve known several 14/15/16 year olds who were admitted to Harvard. and emotional maturity seems to go hand-in-hand with the superlative achievements of students who were able to graduate HS early AND do extraordinary things in the process. Or, perhaps your post is just conjecture, supposition, or a personal opinion? For example: this kid was admitted to Harvard at 15, graduated at 19 and is working for fivethirtyeight: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/ConsumerNews/teen-student-finds-longer-sat-essay-equals-score/story?id=12061494
There’s a difference between highly gifted kids and high achieving kids who want to graduate early.
Ivies will gladly accommodate highly gifted students who started acceleration very young and just kept going, reaching the end of secondary school naturally at a younger age than most.
Students who just want to graduate high school as juniors to get to MIT faster are in a different category and aren’t likely to be successful.
^ I’m not so sure it’s a question of starting acceleration young. I think there are 3 major questions most adcoms ask:
- Is the student academically prepared to make the leap?
- Has the student exhausted the resources and academic opportunities available at the secondary school level?
- Does the student have the maturity, and will they not be out of place among other undergrads?
I would expect that a student who can answer in the affirmative to these would be considered seriously along with other applicants.
In a similar vein, I knew a girl who graduated from high school a year early, then went to college on a 6-year accelerated BA/JD track. She was relatively physically mature (an athlete in a niche sport), so she did not LOOK out of place, but when she started law school she felt out of place socially (she couldn’t legally drink yet) and never connected with her classmates (she did well but not outstanding academically). I agree with above poster, unless we are talking about a true genius-level kid, or a kid who really wants out of their home/HS environment, taking a gap year for study abroad or such would be time better spent.
@gibby my post is not conjecture, supposition or personal opinion. I ask three May graduates of Harvard. They only knew of one under age kid at Harvard as an undergraduate. He started at 16. Do you have more current knowledge of what is going on?
http://www.businessinsider.com/patrick-pan-harvard-freshman-dropout-2015-2 He is back at Harvard and finishing up his degree in computer science. He is also getting a MS from NEC
@collgedad13: A small number of students who are under the age of 18 are admitted to Harvard and other selective colleges every year. To the best of my knowledge, Harvard doesn’t publish the number of under-18 students, but it’s more than one kid every four years. For example, a quick google search turned up these threads of under-18 students recently admitted to Harvard and MIT.
- https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/03/01/one-teenager-thought-outside-shoe-box/24142945/ (google "John Ferguson admitted to harvard" for another article on this student)
- https://www.wmar2news.com/news/watercooler/16-year-old-accepted-into-harvard
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-many-students-that-are-15-16-17-years-old-that-get-into-the-top-universities-like-Harvard-or-MIT
My daughter skipped 1st grade and, as a result, started college (ivy) at barely 17. The biggest drawback was not being able to participate in study abroad and similar programs that required students to be 18. There were no other issues.
Typically a kid who skips a year of HS has one less year of EC accomplishments to be considered, which can hurt their app. Usually students accepted to those types of schools have stellar academic AND EC accomplishments.
Most of my friends who did that end up going to Community College. Many of them ended up going NYU, Berkeley, or even Princeton. So there are good and bad outcomes that can roll in, it just depends how one pushes themselves into becoming one of the best.
You should consider taking extra course at a JC, so that it could speed up your unit count in the future.
I think the biggest hurdles are when age limits are imposed on certain activities, the partying with alcohol and the like. Intellectually there are students who belong in university before the typical age. However I think there is a big difference between students who are studying all the time to get those A’s and who are being pushed to get ahead versus the kid twittling their thumb in school bored to death as they are not remotely challenged.