I just started my senior year of high school, but I actually should be starting my freshman year of college. My birthday’s October 1st, 2000, and the state where I live has a winter cutoff, which means that I was supposed to start Kindergarten in the fall of 2005. However, because my parents thought I was immature and didn’t have a lot of confidence in me, they waited until the fall of 2006 to send me. All through school, I’ve felt embarrassed about being a year behind, and out-of-place for being more than a year older than some of my classmates. The thing is, though, that most states have a September cutoff, which means that in most states, I wouldn’t have been allowed to start Kindergarten until the fall of 2006. Thus, by the standards of most states, I’m in the right grade. If I went to college in a state with a September cutoff, I’d be exactly in the year I’m supposed to be, and no one would think it weird that I was turning 19 in October of my freshman year, since that’s the norm for October-born people in that state. I’d still be one of the very oldest, but I’d still fall within the normal age range for my year. This seems crazy, but lately, nothing has been more important to me than being normal and fitting in.
You’ll still be 18 when you start college. Even if you had a valid reason for worrying about this, there will be plenty of kids born within a few months of your birthdate, whether they are from another state or your own. On the list of things to worry about as you’re working through this process and your senior year, this should be way, way down there.
Be assured that you won’t notice the difference when you get to college, regardless of where you go. Physical differences once you are 18, 19, 20, etc just aren’t that great. Also, many freshmen will have taken a gap year. If it helps, think of it as you took your gap year 12 years ago.
If this is one of several reasons why you want to go to college out of state AND if the finances won’t hurt your family, then go ahead and look at out of state schools. But don’t pass up a great and affordable in-state option. Know that you will find your tribe at any good sized university. It’s such a bigger world than your high school.
I think your viewpoint is pretty self centered. No one — and I mean NO ONE will care. If you dig down, you will meet people who took gap years, year 13 at another school, or many other “kindergarten red shirts” like yourself (this is much more common than you realize). Then you will meet students who took 3 or more years at community college before transferring, students who just didn’t go to college right away for various reasons, and students who are older because they aren’t getting through their degrees in a timely manner. But really— this is all in your head. It will not matter one bit to anyone else.
And lighten up on your parents. Many students start kindergarten a year later than their peers because the parents (or in some case the schools) think they could use an extra year of maturity. It is perfectly valid — it has nothing to do with overall confidence in you. Someday when you are a parent yourself, it will be more obvious to you that it came from a place of love and concern about your long term wellbeing.
It’s always amazing how some people can interpret the same set of facts one way and others the complete opposite.
In affluent communities their are parents that intentionally hold their kids back a year, figuring that by being older the kids are primed for success against their peers. It’s called “academic redshirting”, you can look it up. Yet when your parents did this, whether for this reason or by figuring you weren’t ready to start Kindergarten, you’ve turned it from a disadvantage into a stigma. Go figure…
You really wouldn’t believe the number of conversations parents with children close to the cutoff date have about whether or not to send their kids to kindergarten that year or hold them back have. It’s a hard choice, and really to predict at age 4 exactly what the right answer is for that particular kid. At my kid’s school in CA (Dec. 2 cutoff back when my kids were starting K, although they’ve now moved it to Sept. 1), they had a number of kids in their grades who got sent when they were 4 who had to repeat kindergarten. Not saying that would have happened to you but that’s one risk parents are worried about when they opt to hold back. I’ve got one with a November birthday that I did send at age 4 who is doing fine academically (now in 9th grade) but socially I think he might have been better off if we’d held him back. Or maybe not, he probably would have hated middle school either way.
Anyway, I"m rambling, sorry. Just trying to say, don’t hate your parents for this. Play it off like you are cool for being older… you can drive first, drink legally first (or at least, get into clubs, even if you don’t care to drink). You can hang out with kids in a grade up or 2 grades up. You can find kids who started school in another state or were held back a year for one reason or another… the older you get, the less a year or 2 or 5 matters.
You can vote first. 
Sounds like you’re from Calif…until rather recently, it had a December cut-off for Kindergarten.
Anyway…the truth is, even if a state has/had a late cutoff, many parents in that state still followed other states’ guidelines and didn’t start their youngsters, particularly boys, in K if they turned 5 after July. When we lived in California, even though my boys have July birthdays, and we didn’t hold them back, they were the youngest in their classes because virtually everybody else held back their children born after July 1. It wasn’t unusual for them to have classmates that were more than 12 months older than they were.
So no matter where you go to college, you’re going to find many freshman who are also your age, or older.
Either way, it won’t matter at all. I think that you’ve focused on this age thing to the point of needless obsession.
Nobody cares about this. Different states have different cutoffs and it’s very common for parents to “redshirt” their kids anyway. Some do it for academic reasons, some social, or emotional.
Lots and lots of parents make the same decision to redshirt their kids.
The reality is that no one cares how old you were when you started kindergarten. Lots of kids within the same grade at a school are a year apart in age; there are a million reasons why.
Choose the school that’s right for you. But I would suggest that you concentrate on factors other than this one.
The answer to the subject question is that you would have to look incredibly hard to find a sillier reason to want to go to school out of state. At the college level, nobody cares when your birthday is and very few will even know or want to know.
As an October baby & the mother of an October baby (and both of us moved to regions with different start dates multiple times during our childhoods), I agreeing whole-heartedly with the above posters that birth dates are indeed a very silly reason to go out of state. It is absolutely a non-issue.
However, your last line is not silly, and deserves some serious attention. Going out on a limb and guessing that your biological age is not the only thing that is making you feel out of step with the people around you. If you know what it is that is driving your anxiety, that’s really helpful: look at it and figure out how you want to deal with it (or get help dealing with it). If you don’t know what is making you so anxious, pleasepleaseplease find somebody to talk to asap.
One of the (many, positive) challenges of going off to college is fitting into a new world. That is much easier- and way more fun!- if you are feeling reasonably at peace with who you are in yourself. Being so afraid that something as basic, boring and invisible as your date of birth will make you seem so abnormal that it will keep you from fitting in- nevermind bigger, more visible things (eg, your physical appearance), or more core things about you (your temperament, your sense of humor, the various quirks that every human has)- will make it all but impossible to choose any college.
In colleges your classmates may be 16 or 20. Absolutely no one knows nor cares - not students, not professors. Even if someone heard your age, nobody’d assume you’ve been held back (gap year perhaps, and in upper middle class areas/colleges, some may jump to the conclusion your ambitious parents did an “academic redshirt” to advantage you.) Btw you were not held back, you were redshirted, which is pretty common.
Also, most of your classes will have a mix of students from all years, many of whom are in their 5th year at the college. It’s not like there’s algebra1 or algebra1 H for freshmen and if you’re a sophomore or look like one others know what’s up. Students can take math (or any subject) at any point in their 4 years and can take any class.
However I hear that you’ve built an Intense discomfort about it. Perhaps others have made you feel bad about it perhaps you e developed a bad feeling from it. So, run net price calculators on universities in-state as well as out of state. If you give us which state you live in, your budget, and your stats (uw/w GPA, test scores for example) we can even help you find suitable options.
Kiddo, there a many, many wonderful reasons for choosing to go to college out of state. This one, wouldn’t even make the top 100.
This is a ridiculous reason for wanting to go to college OOS.
–Plenty of parents keep kids back a year and it does benefit many students.
–Nobody will care if you are a few months older when you are in HS.
–A number of freshman will have taken a gap year and will be a year older.
If you want to go OOS and it is affordable that is fine, but this is not a reason to do so.
I was a November baby in an area with a February cutoff. As an adult, looking back, I only wondered if I had started too early. These things are what they are and you can’t change them.
I agree this is not a reason to go OOS. Hey, there’s nothing magical about freshman ages outside your home state. Kids will come from all over, including some already 19, some still 17. Kids at your home state schools will likewise come from various places and range from 17 to 19.
So why the focus on this?
Work through what it is about being among the oldest in your class that bothers you, and use that as a basis for choosing a school - whether instate or OOS. If you’re looking at a flagship university, your instate option will probably have many OOS students, as well as those who have taken a gap year in order to earn enough to pay their tuition. If you’re looking at smaller directional colleges, there are likely to be more non-traditional students.
Your goal is to fit in, but looking at OOS schools due to you age is just trading one difference for another. Unless you are familiar with the culture in this other state (for instance you’ve spent summers there most of your life), there will be cultural differences, and you could end up feeling like a fish out of water. Sure, you might be the same age, but what else will you have in common?
@CTScoutmom It’s not being the oldest that bothers me. It’s the overlap. This year, not only will I be the 1st to turn 18, but I’ll be turning 18 before some of my classmates turn 17. That’s what really make me feel embarrassed and like there’s something wrong with me. If I lived in a district where the cutoff was September 30th, I’d still be the oldest of my classmates, but they’d all be within a year of my age. And that’s what I’m looking for in college. I want to go somewhere where the vast majority of my fellow freshmen will turn 18 before I turn 19.
I don’t think you heard a word anyone said on this thread. We are almost never unanimous— but the unanimous opinion of the adults in this thread is that this is a complete non-issue in college. I think you should see a counselor - you seem obsessed about something that does not matter at all in college or beyond.
In the immortal words of a poster no longer on CC: “Why is (your birthday) anyone else’s business?”
The only kids not yet 18 when you turn 19 will be those born after October 1. Do you think they obsess about being young in the class?