<p>I doubt it would necessarily be a disadvantage, as long as you show that you have the intellectual maturity required to succeed at a school like Stanford. I’m also slightly younger than most other people in the high school class of 2011 (will be graduating at 16 since my birthday’s at the end of June) since I skipped a grade way back when, but it just makes sense to me not to focus on it too much and instead to highlight my personal qualities in my application.</p>
<p>Wait, fledgling you’re only 15? That makes you two years younger than everyone in my class!</p>
<p>Nope, I’m 16. I’ll be turning 17 at the end of June after graduation.</p>
<p>People who skip a grade during high school lose an entire year to show off how awesome they are to colleges. On the one hand, if you’re skipping a grade during high school, you tend to be pretty good anyway; but on the other, the other people applying are usually just as good, and have had extra time to build their… I dunno what word I’m looking for. The stuff you put in your application. Your profile. Something like that. I hope you know what I mean. XD</p>
<p>On top of that, if you’re doing grades 11 and 12 in the same year, the colleges will have only the first half of your most important year of high school grades to look at, so they’ll have less to go on for you, academically speaking. (Keep in mind that this is true even if you had a really strenuous load in sophomore year, because that would set you up to be really spectacular in junior/senior years.)</p>
<p>That’s for a ‘normal’ high schooler, anyway. If you’re in an area with no good schools, or otherwise have no way to occupy your time and challenge yourself/have exhausted all your opportunities, or you’re being discriminated against at school in some way, it makes sense to move on up ASAP, and I doubt that would be much of a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Getting recruited and getting accepted are two different things.</p>
<p>Coaches “recruit” lots of kids. They speak to the adcom about the kids. It gives them the nod if they are equal to someone else, but does not get them in.</p>
<p>If you look at any Stanford Athlete, they have similar grades and scores to everyone else. One person may be great at math, another great at athletics – evens out. But bad students do not get in because of athletics </p>
<p>(at least not when I was on the adcom there many moons ago and it has become harder to get in now)</p>