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<p>My son is in his third year of our local accelerated math program, the University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMTYMP</a>). So he is taking a single-variable calculus course right now (moving from differentiation last semester to integration this semester), which is entered as college credit on his U of MN transcript. He just wrote Zuming Feng today to say that he thinks Exeter's math course is better than UMTYMP. But UMTYMP is pretty good, and it has a good track record for preparing students for careers as mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and financiers. My son also takes distance learning courses in computer programming from EPGY[/url</a>] and the [url=<a href="http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/learning/courses.html%5DCenter">http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/learning/courses.html]Center</a> for Talent Development and he takes a 3D computer graphics at a local proprietary college. </p>
<p>Our science courses have been arranged through our local gifted homeschooling support group. My son has had a conceptual physics course, an earth science course, an astronomy course, and an honors chemistry course through that group. He is now in an AP chemistry course and an honors biology course with local friends from all over the Twin Cities metropolitan area. The parents here have shown considerable ingenuity in finding lab space and equipment and in hiring teachers able to conduct discussion-based science classes. My son also participated in a science fair mentoring program last year. </p>
<p>I am my son's math coach, and to me the biggest appeal of Exeter (as my son also wrote to Mr. Feng today) was getting him a better math coach. My son has qualified for AIME twice, and has been to MathPath over last summer, and he is now well beyond my ability to coach him further in competition math. I think he can self-coach with books I have bought him and also take AoPS</a> classes to get to a higher level of competition math, but DEFINITELY that is the aspect of Exeter that first caught my attention: I follow who scores well on the AMC tests pretty closely, and there are always plenty of Exeter students among the top scorers. </p>
<p>So as we were searching this year for plans for next year, we inquired at all of the top independent day schools in town, asking detailed questions about their science courses. (Almost all the top math kids in town are in UMTYMP for math, wherever they go to school for other subjects.) Our recent conclusion, after checking plans for our homeschool group for next year, is that the coolest courses will come the soonest by staying here, doing a mixture of more joint classes with our local support group, part-time college enrollment, distance learning classes, and self-study using books borrowed from the U of MN's lavish library (which of course has about sixty times the collection size of Exeter's library). But Exeter (and that blue school not too far away) were the last choices to be set aside before we fixed on that plan. Recent communications from Exeter have encouraged us to keep Exeter in mind for next year, and we will definitely do that.</p>