Our daughter is one of the younger kids in her grade (mid June, so 12 in 7th) and we have talked about her redoing 9th at BS. Academically there are no worries but she is very small for her age and a bit naive. Though she is very good with adults, well spoken, etc. She just isn’t as social and “with it” when it comes to social things as her current peers. It doesn’t bother her as much as it used to and she says she doesn’t care if she doesn’t have a million friends. She tends to gravitate towards older kids and has friends that way.
I guess the question is if those are good reasons to have her repeat a year.
Some people have discussed it with AOs during interview - repeat vs. staying with current grade. Also, kids do change a lot between 7 and 9th grade.
She’s only in 7th now? Wait a year and revisit the question. A lot can change in a year at this age.
I think alot of the decision would depends on the school. Our son finished freshman year at Exeter as a 14 year old and our daughter as an almost 13 year old (late june birthday). From your post, I wouldn’t assume she might not outgrow the personlity traits you describe. Many kids never become social or with it. It might help you to consider schools that tend to attract similar kids. Most of my kids lives they joke they attended “nerd school”. What they meant was that the atmosphere was studious and the school full of interesting offbeat kids. This was by design, as many of the other school options were full of kids that just wanted to hang out with friends and academics were secondary. They cared way more about music and pop culture in general.
My point is that I wouldn’t assume your daughter will change who she is by becoming older. It might be best to look for schools that attract similar kids to your daughter as she might be most comfortable there.
Was just going to echo @vegas1 . Age is likely to make a kid bigger, heavier, and probably even stronger. Repeating a year, being red-shirted, PG year, any variant of those may help an athlete gain an edge. It is less likely to make a kid more outgoing, more social, or something other than who they are.
You have a year to decide, but finding a school that’s a good fit for your daughter may be easier than trying to get her to grow into a fit.
She’s actually really outgoing, just doesn’t have a ton of friends because it’s not “cool to be smart” vs. popular and a cheerleader here. She does not want to repeat a grade, so we lean towards not worrying about it.
She’s likely to find that issue resolved at a rigorous BS. It’s still cool to be an athlete, artist, whatever, but it’s cool to be smart as well. The kids most admired are typically those that are good at it all - athletic, arts and stellar grades. My kids always said at there school, relative to public school, everyone had some nerd in them. 
Plus, at my kids’ BS, there was a lot more mingling between grade levels than there was in public school, with socially and in classes which helps I think.
My kid just started BS- interviewed at 12 and started BS at 13. She is the second youngest ( by 2 days!) in her BS class. Both are girls. The ages in her class range from 13-16! She has not had a problem with her age- most kids don’t know or don’t care. Our impression is that at BS age is fluid- especially since academic classes are mixed. One thing to think about is maturity. Going to BS is tough in the beginning- finding friends, trying out for teams/clubs, advocating for yourself both in and out of the classroom… (And for girls, the possibly of going through puberty away from home) There is no harm in waiting another year. A good portion of her BS class did-
We gave the “to repeat or not to repeat” question a great deal of thought when our daughter was beginning the admissions process. Even though she would have been young for her class she was in a physically and socially appropriate place for her age so I must admit that our motive for contemplating that option may have been opportunistic. Her two older brothers attend two different boarding schools and each claimed that half of their class was a repeat. Now I don’t think that statistic is real but I do think that it is a very large percentage and both have a significant number of friends who have repeated. One son who was a top math student in his good middle school reported that his Freshman year accelerated geometry class was known as ‘Math for Dummies’. The reason isn’t that the school attracted math geniuses, although there are some of those, it is that many of the students had had geometry during their first 9th grade year. Many of the tour guides at the schools that we visited were repeats and almost universally they held leadership roles and were top athletes in advanced classes.
Before my wife suggested that we consider repeating as an option, my own feeling was that if she was a qualified applicant now having her repeat seemed like gaming the system. So I reached out to a college friend who happens to be in the admissions office at one of the acronym schools. We had a lengthy back and forth on the issue but the short of it is that he said that it is a family decision and that from their point of view there is rarely a downside. They like kids who are more mature both emotionally and physically and if they have a leg up on academics it means that those kids can ultimately better take advantage of the advanced courses that they offer. I have not seen it mentioned here but I imagine that the excellent college matriculations that many of the top schools boast owe at least some of their success to the fact that many of their already bright students have enjoyed an extra year of high school. The flip side, I suppose, is that many students who have not had an extra year are arguably at a disadvantage relative to their older peers. If you had the luxury of an extra year of high school, why wouldn’t you take advantage of that? This exercise was academic for us since my daughter wouldn’t even consider it. Oh, and I agree that an extra year won’t change a kid’s personality and that ultimately fit is most important.
When I think back to my kids and their peers and who repeated and who didn’t and where they all matriculated to college, I can’t say I saw and advantage/disadvantage to repeating or not playing out in college results.
Another thing to consider is whether you have a good viable option for that initial 9th grade year, one where your student won’t get off track.
@doschicos I’d like to see the statistics but I’m sure that they are not easily obtained. If the kids who did not repeat had an extra year, where might they have landed if they had an extra year? Maybe exactly the same place but who can predict how their maturity and interests might have evolved over that year. Similarly for those students who did repeat, where might they have landed if they had not? I’m guessing that generally speaking no mater where they ended up in college, they benefited from the extra year. It just seems logical to me that kids who repeat for an athletic advantage may enjoy that advantage when applying to colleges (often that’s the point) and kids who land in all AP or similarly rigorous classes their junior and senior years because they had an extra year of high school are likely more attractive candidates to many colleges.
Slightly off topic: when my brother was going through the admissions process with one of his kids he had a bias against schools that accepted PGs. He attended a boarding school that did not take PGs and always felt that it was more fair that the athletes in their programs could work their way up to Varsity and not be denied because the school brought in ringers who took their slots senior year.
My kids’ school does not take PGs but such school do take repeat juniors and such. There are kids at my kids’ school that repeat for athletics but its not an huge amount of kids. When I look at the top students in the graduating classes and those that matriculate to tippy top colleges, I can’t see any pattern between repeats and non-repeats. My kids school doesn’t rank or have APs either for that matter. The vast majority are going to graduate with 4 years each of math, science, humanities, foreign language. If a student is getting top grades in each of those and testing well, I don’t think Harvard and Stanford and the like are going to give too many bonus points to the repeat taking some advanced science class, for example, over the on age student who still knocks the cover off the ball taking Physics, Chem, Bio and some advanced class like Anatomy for example.
I think at the most selective boarding schools, admissions is selecting students that they think will do well regardless of age and that pays out on the college matriculation end, regardless of age. Legacies, athletes, top academic students, kids with leadership roles, URMs (to a lesser degree because I don’t see many of them repeating at all) don’t seem to be monopolized by repeats or non-repeats and those are all groups that do best in terms of college rankings.
I’m sure it can vary from school to school.
Also, I don’t see parents choosing to repeat their child for college matriculation purposes as much as just getting them into the BS of choice in the first place.
I mostly agree with you on the tippy top college level. Those candidates are typically exceptional and academically qualified regardless of age and most kids who gain admission have some talent that makes them stand out from the pack beyond class rigor and gpa - that’s a dime a dozen for them. But even the tippy top boarding schools only send 1/3 or fewer of their students to those. My guess is that the advantage gained by repeating often plays out for the remaining 2/3rds of students. I may be cynical but as much as I believe that it should not be the case, for many parents the boarding school of their choice (not necessarily the child’s) is closely correlated with the school’s college matriculations.
Mine started BS at 13. Well, she will be still 13. For personal development I think it was right to start now. But for admissions on both BS and college, I see clear advantage of delaying an year.
Thinking of all the anecdotal examples I have - which number very, very high - I still can’t see it. I’d fathom a guess that some of the repeats would not have been accepted to the BS without repeating. They might be a year ahead in some subjects due to repeating but that doesn’t make them intellectually or socially advanced. In other words, many of them repeat for a reason, not just athletics. I’d speculate that, adjusting for age, the younger, age appropriate students are a brighter, more mature group on average.
It would certainly make for an interesting study.
With just one anecdotal example, my daughter looked and talked like a precocious child at 12, and looks and talks like a regular high teen at 13. I didn’t see that when she was 12. But now I see the clear difference.
Mine is an hypothesis. If the advantage is that a student gains admission into a better BS than they otherwise might have if they had not repeated a year that alone represents an advantage (IMO) that they would not have had if they and chosen not to repeat. I also believe that all other things remaining equal the kid with the advanced language class, math class and science class (often because they had the higher level math) is a more attractive candidate to many college admissions officers than the candidate who does not have those classes. I’m not saying that these students make up a large percentage of any particular class but I know students who fit this profile. I’d love to see a study too. If there is anything left to be said, I’d be happy to continue this discussion by PM but it seems we are straying a bit from the OPs original query.
Advanced classes can be reached other ways than repeating grades. Our kids grade skipped and subject accelerated. All started as Freshman with numerous high school credit courses under their belts that were taken through public middle schools. They received no high school credits at their BS for these classes, but all placed higher in math and science classes as a result of the prior classes.
After having kids attending Exeter over the last 6 years, you can imagine our kids have had many friends who went on to attend Ivies and we have seen no correlation or advantage related to age. We have seen correlation with legacies, prodigious talent and hard work,
I went to Andover at age 13. A classmate of mine was 12! It was very cool to be smart, as well, which was refreshing. Because it was a top school with extremely driven students, a lot of my classmates were around my age. Regardless of age, students have to have a certain level of maturity to be able to handle the coursework and extracurriculars. As far as repeating the 9th grade, I would defer to the AO and see what they have to say. PA only frequently suggests that rising 11th graders repeat their sophomore (lower) year, because junior (upper) year is traditionally the most difficult and they want the new students to be prepared. But once the AO gets to know your daughter they will be able to give you the best advice about repeating. Just tell your daughter that repeating freshman year isn’t punishment; it will simply give her the best chance for success. But as I said earlier, at Andover it’s not unusual for a freshman to be 13, and I’m sure it’s the same at other top BS.