<p>The trend does seem to be holding your kid back so they are smarter. Uh - college at 16...what a considerable burdon - missing out on so many years of your fun childhood. Why rush into a job and rush out of your childhood? Enjoy it while you can...</p>
<p>I've never been big on following "trends". The reality is that not all people mature at the same pace. It is ridiculous to force children to stay in high school if there is nothing left to challenge them, if they have completed and excelled at all the academics. This is not "rushing into a job". It is saving a child from boredom and stagnation and enabling them to spend their years of education, which will likely include several years of graduate school, actually learning. Again, I mention Simon's Rock College of Bard as an option, since this top LAC was created specifically for these types of students, most of whom enter at the age of 15 or 16 without graduating high school. Set in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, the college has topnotch professors who engage the students. After two years, they receive an AA degree and have a choice of staying at Simon's Rock for two more years (including the option of taking a year abroad) and then receiving an AA and moving on to graduate school, or transferring to another university as a junior at the age of 17 or 18. (Giving students the opportunity to spend those first two years of college with others their same age does seem to help ease the transition.) The college has been around for nearly 40 years. Now affiliated with Bard College, students have an option of transferring to Bard as long as they keep their grades up. They also are often accepted at top universities throughout the country as noted in my earlier post. If anyone has any questions about this feel free to PM me.</p>
<p>I graduated early so i have some experience with this whole young issue (i'm 1.5-2 years younger than the most of the class of '05). I've spoken to admissions counselors from umich, purdue, cornell, texas-austin, gatech, and kansas state, and their main concern was the number of years of high school. they feel high school is when maturity really starts to set in. i graduated with only 3yrs rather than 4, so it was an issue for me. however, since it seems you'll have all 4 years, it won't matter too much. but at age 16, i got accepted everywhere i applied (purdue, kansas state, and penn state, i didn't apply anywhere selective because, well, i'm not good enough. even with a senior year, i wouldn't be good enough). i know of a girl who turned 16 in 2005 and she's going to an ivy league unviersity (can't remember which one). and being young in college won't be much of an issue, imo, as long as you're on their maturity level and you don't tell people your age. they'll just assume you're 18. </p>
<p>and don't listen to people like spartan who say you're throwing away your childhood. you're getting 4 years of HS. that's better than me, i threw away my senior year. people think it's horrible, but all i've got to say to them is that they don't know why i chose this path, so they shouldn't judge. i think you'll be just fine. you won't be given any special consideration, but with 4 years of hs, i highly doubt it'll be detrimental.</p>
<p>thanks guys! the confidence is surging!</p>
<p>I don't have anything good to say about high school, which I consider a pretty worthless waste of time for many people. I don't think languishing in a high school that doesn't challenge you is a good idea for anyone. But I still think being 16 will hurt you in admissions, at least for some colleges. One of the colleges my son looked at did not require interviews generally, but did require them of unusually young applicants to address the maturity issue, no matter how great they were academically. Many CCs have a strict minimum age of 16 for dual enrollment no matter how smart or advanced the student is. Even though dual enrollment students are still living at home and dorm life is not an issue, they simply do not want to be responsible for younger kids in an adult setting. Residential programs that put advanced high school juniors and seniors on college campuses always provide a very different level of support and supervision than the college students receive on the same campus, even though the high school students are generally more academically advanced.</p>
<p>The best you can hope for is for your age to be a neutral factor for a particular college. It certainly is not going to help you in admissions.</p>
<p>I have a book recommendation for smart students who finish high school early (or simply detest high school), and are willing to consider options other than simply marching off to college early. It's The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn.</p>
<p>The thing about Simon's Rock, though, is that it's almost all high school dropouts. It's almost a little weird to be a high school graduate and be going... I think my year, 6 people out of 144 were high school graduates. </p>
<p>However, I 100% disagree with anyone who thinks that the key to having a happy childhood is staying in high school. Leaving to go to Simon's Rock is hands down the best decision I EVER made, and I was about a MILLION times happier there than I ever was at high school, and I made amazing friends and had a wonderful time. It was a MUCH better experience than high school. High school was actively a bad experience, Simon's Rock was actively a GREAT one. (Ditto on the AA graduates going to top colleges, though. In my particular group of friends, the breakdown came to: 1 to UChicago (me), 2 to Rice, 1 to Swarthmore, 1 to Columbia, and 1 to Barnard, and the rest I don't know or stayed at Simon's Rock by choice. Of the 7 people I know who applied to UChicago from Simon's Rock, every single one got in. :) )</p>
<p>Just as a note from someone who decided to stay in high school for the full four years, rather than graduate a year early: I wouldn't recommend it. I stayed so I could graduate as valedictorian (my school doesn't let you if you skip a grade) and because everyone said it was better not to rush things. Now, I did like my high school. I had many wonderful teachers, good friends, fun activities. But I had already finished all of the "real" classes my junior year: all the math and english classes, plus most of the academic electives. Most of my closest friends were in the grade ahead of me, and I felt much better prepared for college a year ago than I do now. It worked out fine, I'll be going to a college I'm excited about and I made some new friends last year, but I was still basically just stagnating for a year, and I was incredibly bored academically.</p>
<p>If you have been younger than your classmates for years (since 4/5th grade?) I'm sure you are at least as mature, and I doubt if admissions people would look down on it. I don't think it would help a whole lot, and you'd probably be better off finding something else for your essay, but I don't see it hurting your chances either.</p>
<p>Wow I'm really glad I stumbled across this post, I really feel it applies to me. I'm 15 now, and I just finished my junior year. How I got that way is probably a different story than most peoples though. I was born in London, and the cut off date there is September, which is when I was born, and my parents decided to let me start school at three instead of four. So then, I moved to America, at age 6/7, and age-wise I should have been put into 1st grade, but since I could already read and write, they put me in 3rd grade.
I have been two years younger than my classmates for 8 years, and one year younger than them for 11. It really never comes up, and because I've been surrounded by people at a certain maturity level for so long, I have naturally become like them, and most of my friends, unless I told them, never even realized. In fact the only time its ever come up is now at the time of drivers licenses, but I'm dealing.<br>
Will my college experience be different than most people's? Yes. I won't be able to drive for a year, I probably will never be able to legally drink, but that doesn't matter to me. Why would I wait to go to college? I'm ready now, just like all of my classmates are, and my college experience will be as valuable and as enjoyable as anyone elses.</p>