<p>Thank you all for the replies.</p>
<p>Actually at our high school they do count the grades. My soon to be 8th grader will be taking high school math and maybe the Spanish and both those grades and the credit will show up on his high school transcript. It’s one thing they caution the parents about because sometimes 8th graders don’t understand that if they don’t do well in the class it will affect their HS GPA and potentially their class rank.</p>
<p>Your son is obviously very advanced in math. Does he watch Khan Academy videos on his own? If you registered him for precalc over the summer, he’d probably jump at the chance… (Not that he should, but a 7th grader who takes Algebra 2 for fun and can answer 27 algebra 2 questions in 30 seconds for the sheer pleasure of the challenge would probably find “fun” some things many other kids don’t.)
Has he taken the SAT for CTY/ Duke TIP/Stanford EPGY?
<a href=“On-Campus Overview | Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY)”>http://cty.jhu.edu/summer/</a>
<a href=“On-Campus Overview | Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY)”>http://cty.jhu.edu/summer/grades7-12/index.html</a>
<a href=“http://cty.jhu.edu/summer/docs/intensive_eligibility.pdf”>http://cty.jhu.edu/summer/docs/intensive_eligibility.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://tip.duke.edu/node/238”>http://tip.duke.edu/node/238</a>
<a href=“http://tip.duke.edu/node/240”>http://tip.duke.edu/node/240</a>
<a href=“http://tip.duke.edu/node/44”>http://tip.duke.edu/node/44</a>
<a href=“http://epgy.stanford.edu/”>http://epgy.stanford.edu/</a></p>
<p>Our HS does put classes taken in middle school on the transcript with the grades for high school math and Spanish, but it is not included in the calculated GPA. You should check with the high school and possibly the colleges you are looking toward. I don’t think the UC’s look at anything before 10th grade for GPA calculation.</p>
<p>BlastOff -</p>
<p>Find out what arrangements are available in your area for students who are very advanced in math. He might need to be attending college part-time for the math and related subjects even before he gets to high school. That happened with a young person I know. He started college at 15 because there was no more math or physics for him to take locally.</p>
<p>@MichiganGeorgia - what happens when your 8th grader finishes all the high school math while still in high school? as other posters said, 10th-11th-12th grade depending on the state we are in, student needs Math subject for GPA? Can they take college Math by then and included in their high school GPA ?</p>
<p>@MYOS1634 - He watches the Khan Academy sometimes but I noticed he would often fast forward it. So I doubt if he is really getting the “concepts” The last time I saw him watched it, he was in Trigonometry. Does Khan have some tests after the video? Sorry, I wouldn’t know it. I usually just leave him alone when he is studying. </p>
<p>He took the CTY-SCAT after 5th grade. Couldn’t test for the SAT because of his grade level. He was 97% compared to grade 9th. I guess he can take the SAT now if he wants to. Just the subject Math SAT, right?</p>
<p>@my2sonsfromca - Yes, definitely I will be checking the schools. I wonder if student can retake a subject in 11th or 12th grade just for the purpose of GPA.</p>
<p>@happymomof1 - I’m having trouble enrolling him in brick and mortar colleges because of his age. One time, he really wanted to take exercise physiology, but there were many obstacles to enrolling in it. Most schools require prerequisite, some have minimum age to enroll, conflict of schedules so finally we found Coursera Online, glad it didn’t ask for age. He did it and passed it though it was not credited. Again, just for fun! I do hope Coursera is not reading this because he already has plan to enroll in a couple of courses.</p>
<p>@Blastoff - Well the way it normally works at our school is that they take AP Statistics in 10th grade so that slows them down so they end up in AP Calc BC as 12th graders. However once in a while a kid will by pass AP Statistics since depending on where you go to college you won’t get credit it for it anyways. It that case they can enroll at a local college and yes the grade is transferred back and included in their high school GPA.</p>
<p>However it’s going to depend on your school and what they do there.</p>
<p>@Blastoff It sounds like he’s doing a lot of online and self-study courses. Is he homeschooled? If not, what are his school-based classes covering? Are the independent study classes in lieu of or in addition to what is being covered in the school curriculum? </p>
<p>You will likely find that your school handles things differently than other folks’ schools. </p>
<p>My son took algebra 2 in 7th grade and pre-calc in 8th grade, both at the district high school. We specifically asked the high school principal at the end of his 8th grade year whether the credit would apply to his HS transcript and she said no. At the end of his freshman year, we were shocked to see both classes on his transcript, including honors credit. It also worked into his GPA (though that isn’t readily apparent). The credit also counts towards the 4 years of required high school math (total of four credits) for graduation. </p>
<p>My kid took advanced calculus his freshman year (equivalent to Calc AB) and had no issues at all. It was great for him to be in classes with older kids- he’s still friends with some of them this year too.</p>
<p>Last summer he wanted to take Calc 2. We looked at the local community college and he would’ve had to take a bunch of entrance exams to even be a student. Oddly, they wouldn’t take his SAT math 2 score of 800 for one of the required exams (they would, however, take an SAT score if he had it! - weird)</p>
<p>We found it easier to sign up at the state university. Registering him as a student was super easy, but getting him signed up for the class was harder. You mentioned prerequisites. What I found was that I could contact the professor directly and let him know that my 15 yo son wanted to take his calc 2 class, and asked him if he would be willing to sign him in. He did. It may take a bit more digging - like calling the math department at the college- to find out the workaround.</p>
<p>As a sophomore, he has taken calc 3 and diff Eq at the local LAC. He no longer - after calc 2 - needs the credit to graduate from high school so he is just choosing at this point to move forward. He has the option to branch out to the sciences or really anything, but as a math kid he wants to stay with math. The hardest thing is lining up the schedule of the high school with the schedule of the college. </p>
<p>If he’s interested in CTY summer courses he needs to take the whole SAT. What he’s eligible for will depend on how high his scores are in both math and critical reading. (Writing won’t count at all if it’s still on the SAT.) My older son, the math guy, really enjoyed both their Cryptography course and the Game Theory course. Some of the matrix math they used he didn’t meet again till he was taking a quantum mechanics course. My kid did not end up as accelerated as your kid because he got more interested in computer programming than in pure math.</p>
<p>I would recommend that your son look into classes at the Art of Problem Solving. They’re classes tend to go pretty deep into the subject material, so you would learn more from an Algebra class there than you would in a regular high school algebra class. If your son is spending almost a second per problem (!), it might be good to expose him to harder problems, rather than problems that require more advanced material. It might help him slow down too, which I think would be a good thing.</p>
<p>^ @warbrain beat me to the suggestion of AoPS! </p>
<p>@MichiganGeorgia - I think once he is in high school, if he wants to he can easily do college courses and get credit from that. Right now, as he is only in 7th grade and his middle school can only offer the highest subject is Honors Geometry. Hence, he has to do online Algebra 2. Also, I checked nearby community colleges if I can enroll him but they have requirements like age, freshman must be at least 18 yo., or has GED, entrance exam, ENG101, high school diploma, etc. He is only 12 yo. and I don’t want him taking the GED.</p>
<p>@ellieMom - He goes to public school and supplements his Math schoolwork voluntarily by doing the online study and mostly from borrowing books from the library. He is not formally homeschool but I feel the way he is self studying he might as well be. I have been contemplating on homeschooling him early on because I know he is advance, but I want him to have the experience of the school atmosphere and not miss out socially.</p>
<p>@missbwith2boys - I should try contacting the professor next time. I just get discouraged when I see that there is an age minimum to enroll. So at least online they usually don’t ask.</p>
<p>@mathmom - CTY tuition is too expensive for us.</p>
<p>@warbrain @Hoggirl - I will look into the Art of Problem Solving. I just checked the website and it looks doable (tuition, schedule) Thank you for sharing. I will look into the details and ask him if he is interested.</p>
<p>@BlastOff CTY does have scholarships available. (I know because I get called for donations to the scholarship fund more often than I would like.) I think he would be a great candidate for one. </p>
<p>@EllieMom - I’ll check closely into that. Thanks.</p>
<p>For those who PM me, thank you very much for sharing your own experiences and for the invaluable advice. I am new to this site. I don’t know if I am able to reply via PM yet. I actually tried to reply but I don’t know if you got them. The msg remained in my inbox. I apologized for my ignorance, I haven’t read the details on how this site works. </p>