<p>@DrGoogle, I’d bet money that’s the case most colleges. Our boys are taking longer to grow up than our girls, and both of them are taking longer to grow up than their grandparents did. I’m thinking that we ought to not admit boys until they’re 22 and girls until they’re 20. </p>
<p>I think a lot of the parents keep the kid back a year but even a year is not enough. </p>
<p>My younger child was more than ready to come out running, even tho a December birth, yet my August child may only incrementally get to the full trot. I think colleges need to adjust to this new reality, esp. those 3200 colleges that are NOT getting any of the highest-achieving seniors. Even the elite schools will need to pay particular attention to the academically fluent but socially inept. College is just too expensive to be spending it on young people who aren’t prepared for the great opportunities it offers. So many of them, and their parents, come to college expecting another year of high school, only with less supervision and more inebriants. This occurs despite the fact that someone is spending a college graduate’s salary (should she have one) each year to have the same experience she would have if she had an apartment and a job and was actually making money instead of throwing it away.</p>
<p>The automatic move from h.s. to college has got to stop. Only the proven high schoolers should be allowed to make this transition, and they should have to prove their bonifides during the course of the college year or lose their enrollment. Parents are even more at fault for this situation than their children and the high schools and colleges. We’re the ones who’re going to have to put a stop to this reckless spending.</p>
<p>I must have missed test scores. I didn’t see them on the thread anywhere. I agree that some kids take longer to mature intellectually/emotionally. In that case a gap year may make sense.</p>