<p>For years my kids went to a school with no APs, no honors courses, and no class ranks, and many, many friends of theirs graduated from that school. Students there had absolutely no problem getting accepted at good colleges. The school was well known, and the colleges that drew the most applications were plenty familiar with its course structure and grading system. In many cases, the adcoms could have reconstructed class rank fairly accurately just from the applications in front of them, although the school tried to counsel kids so that the top students didn’t all apply to the same colleges. (I often suspected that there were at least 3-4 students each year whose GC letters called them the top student in the class. As long as there was no overlap in their college lists, no one would ever catch that.)</p>
<p>As ldinct says, the one place where the OP’s son will be at a disadvantage is in merit scholarship consideration at state universities, where the expectation is that top students will have 4-point-something weighted GPAs. But even there, it’s not universal. I know a number of kids who got great competitive merit scholarships at Pittsburgh, for example, despite not having what would look like top grades at a public school. The OP may also be hurt a little at state universities with strict caps on out-of-state admissions and a tendency to do admissions by the numbers only. In the Linguistics world, Texas may fall into that category.</p>
<p>I have a general sense of the Linguistics landscape, and my guess is that the OP should not have a major problem.</p>
<p>I would say if you have a student who is going to attend a public where merit scholarships are autoawarded based on GPA and test scores and your student goes to a school that doesn’t weight, I would call the admissions office first (they generally “mark” these as opposed to finaid) and talk to them. Generally with an instate student at an instate public, the colleges “know” the schools well enough to know who weights and who doesn’t, but with an out of state public it might be worth asking. As an example a 3.5 unweighted might be a 3.7 weighted with multiple AP classes and could make a difference if the college awards those auto-discounts simply on school reported GPAs. In general though it is my experience that these auto-discounts are primarily at public colleges. With a private if there for example there may be a cut-off for a specific scholarship you could certainly call and ask how they ascertain the GPA for those cut-offs. It’s never a “bad” idea to do some investigating if it is a school that is high on the student’s “want” list and admittance is assured. I will say, that it was my experience that the colleges only differentiate the AP classes…some schools have all sorts of distinctions like honors classes, etc. and I did not get the sense that colleges will adjust unweighted GPAs for those sorts of distinctions. YMMV of course, but those were my experiences with S1 and out of state public schools and unweighted GPA.</p>
<p>Regarding his age and a gap year- don’t do it. There are not any good alternatives to college for an under 18 year old gifted student. Too young for independent travel, going overseas, et al. Colleges can easily handle students under 18- they also often have even younger HS students taking some classes. You want your son to be intellectually challenged after HS, college is the best place for that. In general no one knows or cares about anyone’s age in college- other students/faculty- unlike what may occur in the HS setting.</p>
<p>Our son could have graduated with a math major in 3 years, which would have meant being less competitive for grad schools in math so he chose another year which included grad level math courses at his fairly high ranked in grad math school. Last year he blew it in his math grad apps- overreached in the brutal competition. He chose to cancel graduation, and add some more comp sci. He is doing a 5th undergrad year, including more grad level math courses- at undergrad prices. Retook math GRE, choosing schools and applying at soon to be 21. He will have better credentials this time (many math grad school applicants have beyond the BS in their home countries- international competition, as many realize when their college student complains about his/her foreign TA). Perhaps his maturity (combined with his personality trait of independence and unwillingness to take our advice, which doesn’t change) will make a difference in his SOP, et al. He is much better off doing a 5th year of college than he would have a full 5 years of elementary school (I know his K-12 academic and social et al life).</p>
<p>Do not count on a NMS- only around 1/3 of the finalists get any money (we didn’t need finacial aid). Some schools do offer merit aid as well as need aid- Washington U (St Louis) is one.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me. I learned a lot about gifted students while son was in school before college. Never hold your son back. Do not worry about his ability to handle all of the nonacademic aspects of college. Kids do rise to the challenge. The son who required you to turn off his extra loud alarm clock and wake him up will do just fine in college. My son never worried about grades- and it shows in HS and college grades, he gets A’s when he wants and doesn’t worry about lesser grades in some courses (taking courses not in his strengths or, as in HS, not putting forth maximal effort). Your son has been having the full HS experience- he did not skip grades at this level- and so will go to college in sync with his HS graduating class peers. A gap year would remove him from the experiences his HS friends are undergoing. Your son is who he is- personality quirks will not disappear by waiting for college. Look at his parents for clues- how intense are you two? Brilliant but “lazy” relative to possible accomplishments? Some enjoy high intensity living, others choose a lifestyle with time for life outside of academics…</p>
<p>Thanks, wis75. We have never held him back, it’s more a case of us chasing after him! </p>
<p>Personality quirks aside (fwiw, his parents are both pretty high achievers), he is clearly a bit behind on work habits, etc. - but he is just about in line with 10th grade boys (my husband teaches high school so has some sense of that). Whether or not he’ll be ready to take on college right away without parental support is still an open question - in both his mind and ours. DS has some reservations about facing the “wild life” that is part of college as well, and I think that’s probably mostly maturity (not that I <em>want</em> him indulging in the wild life - but I do want him to feel secure in his own response to it). We’ve seen enough of my husband’s former students crash and burn in their first year of college–ALL kinds of kids and at ALL kinds of schools–that our eyes are wide open to that possibility. </p>
<p>His potential gap year “strategy” is one that wouldn’t work at most schools: his school requires passing a swimming test to graduate. He didn’t pass it as a 9th grader, and hasn’t retaken it, in case he wants to do a foreign exchange meant for teenagers - which I don’t think anyone would say would be a bad gap experience ipso facto, particularly for a kid who loves learning languages. Those programs generally require that you be under 18 and have not graduated from high school. Now, whether or not that near-subterfuge will pass muster if he applies…who knows?</p>
I agree and disagree. I graduated from college at 16 and my parents (with encouragement from European friends) encouraged me to go to a language institute in France with a homestay with a French family. That family became a second family to me. I remained in touch, attended their kids weddings visited them several times over the intervening years. A budding linguist might find this a great way to spend a year. I have a friend now whose daughter did something similar with a Rotary scholarship. There are a number of opportunities like this aimed precisely at high school students.</p>
<p>That said, I have also known very young students to flourish in college. My husband’s college roommate started at Harvard at 15. He was 16 when I met him. And while he sometimes (often!) seemed like a geeky clueless math major, it never once crossed my mind that his youth had anything to do with it. His older roommates were all very similar. I only found out how young he was about ten years ago.</p>
<p>Edited to add that it looks like PghMomof2 and I are on the same page. :)</p>
<p>This is a situation that could certainly make a difference at the “right tail” schools. Supppose there are 300 in the class. Suppose 15 of them are in the upper advanced math course, and 70 of them are in accelerated but not the most accelerated math. Depending on how he does in his math class, and depending on the relative grading scale of the two math groups, you could conceivable see a couple dozen kids score better than he does in math. Throw in some other course with a similar set of issues, and you could knock his apparent “rank” down one entire decile. The school is almost certainly providing the colleges with a “key” to rank its applicants. </p>
<p>If his grades are among the 5-10 best kids, it wont matter. But if he would have been in the lower part of the first decile at a weighted grades school, this system has the potential to push him quite a bit lower. Throw in a weak grade in one course, and some high scores and he’ll fit the underacheiver profile, even though its not appropriate.</p>
<p>If he’s in the second grouping in most of his courses instead of the one with the top 5-8% or so, this system is helping him.</p>
<p>Our experience with a high school that had a minimal weighting system was that colleges–even instate-- did not know our HS’s way of operating, and the HS did not send out anything, data or formulas, that would clarify the weighting etc. So kids lost out on stats-based scholarships. I suggest, if your kid has room on the application, that your kid put in an explainer about how the HS does or doesn’t weight, rank, and so on, or that HS will release rank for scholarships (if they indeed will do this). Also ask the counselor how they evaluate the relative rigor of your kid’s curriculum on the Common App counselor evaluation. And call colleges to ask how they read apps from his school and ask if there is any further information that they would need to consider him for scholarships. Then email the request to his counselor so that he does not lose merit money he might otherwise be eligible for.</p>
<p>PhgMomof2- my kids go to a school that does the same thing. It can be a disadvantage in applying to large state schools where admissions are strictly by the numbers (like Penn State). It is my understanding that even schools which don’t provide students with a GPA do have to come up with one to provide to Penn State and similar schools. You may want to ask your school counselor about it.</p>