Tell me about your experience at an early college program.

What motivated you all to sign up for this? To be perfectly frank, I was being bullied towards the point of suicide at my original high school. That said, I realize that bullied kids who don't happen to be super gifted and test well and look great on paper might not have the opportunity to attend schools like LSMSA. In a more specific way -- my parents had heard about the school from a neighbor. I was IQ tested at a young age (kindergarten?) and to an extent was tracked into gifted programs for virtually my whole education. After an extremely rocky junior high experience (see above), my parents sent me to a summer program that acted as a sort of feeder for potential LSMSA applicants. It was there that I discovered that I wasn't a walking piece of garbage. From that point, it was pretty obvious that I'd be applying to LSMSA, and would do just about any odious academic task in order to up my chances of admittance. Looking back, did you get what you were looking for? Yes, and more. I cannot imagine my life without that school. Not so much for the "pre-college" experience, but because, as I explain it to other people, "It was like Hogwarts, for nerds." Not only was I around people who were like me, and not bullied anymore, but suddenly there was this whole world of stuff to learn about, and new ways of learning it, and everybody was actually excited to be there, doing it. The thing I'm most nostalgic about is that shared sense of excitement for academic pursuits (unsurprisingly a lot of my fellow alumni are academics today). I would have an American History cram night, and it would be the most fun thing I did all week. And it was assumed that this was normal -- everybody else in my history study group was SUPER PASSIONATE, and there was this shared idea that it was OK to care about the impact of British policy on the frontier on the American Revolution, or the scene you were rehearsing for drama class, or the Joyce short story you were going to talk about in Lit tomorrow. People were excited about Faulkner, or the Second Great Awakening, or C++ (it was the 90s), or how polymers behaved. And nobody thought that was weird.

I attended a math and science boarding school from 16-18 that was on a college campus and co-enrolled courses with the college students. Our curricula was standard for any science/engineering student -- 4 semesters of college English, the calculus sequence, intro biology, chemistry, and physics along with all the associated labs. Beyond that, the workload was whatever you wanted it to be. I was in a workaholic clique that took 18-21 hours per semester, but I also had more laid back friends who took 12-15. There was a wide distribution of students in the program. Graduating guaranteed admission to the major (well-regarded) state school, so some parents pushed their kids to attend against their will. I and many friends attended because we were desperate to get out of our previous high schools for social/academic reasons; other students attended because they wanted to get away from their parents’ supervision. Results were mixed and the program had a high attrition/expulsion rate. At my graduation, ~20 people went on to MIT/Stanford/Ivy League, 25% didn't graduate, and the rest went to the state school or schools of similar caliber. Success/failure was sink or swim and had more to do with personal maturity than intelligence. One thing I do appreciate is that my boarding school gave us exposure to research labs, which I loved and had a huge impact on my later trajectory. I ended up studying biochemistry in undergrad for 4 years, and am currently working on a PhD. Coursewise, starting earlier didn’t have a huge impact on undergrad. I placed out of some entry level classes, but chose to retake some critical to my major. Eh, I don’t know. To be honest, I was a good student in my previous high school and I probably would have still gotten into my undergrad if I’d stayed. Would I go again if I had to? In a heartbeat. Would I advise that Kid X go? I don’t know. I was a motivated kid, and I also saw a lot of friends struggle when they probably would have been ok in a more traditional environment. (Feel free to memail if you have any specific questions.)

I attended Duke's TIP (Talent Identification Program) for three summers from the ages of 12 - 14, studying math the first two times and French the third. The curriculum was tough in that we covered a typical high school year's worth of material in three weeks. It was great in that when I got back to school I was able to jump right into the more interesting advanced classes. But more than that, what I got out of it was the understanding that I was not a "freak," or at least that if I was, there were more out there like me. I met my best friend there and she and I supported each other emotionally all through our teenage years when others picked on us. We're still friends over 25 years later. I also had a scholarship to study English Lit at the local women's college when I was 14. I was placed in a sophomore class which was excellent in terms of material but less good in terms of social development. I still remember the poems and essays I studied in that class and feel I got a good grounding in English Lit at an early age. However, I was painfully shy among those college women and the professor wasn't very supportive of my presence there. Oh well, I still got a lot out of it. Then I skipped my senior year of high school, moved in with a much older boyfriend, and attended my state college a year early. This was fantastic as it got me out of my abusive family home and into adult life at an early age. I didn't find the college classes the difficult part - it was more the supporting myself and navigating adult relationships that was challenging. I made a lot of mistakes, did lots of stupid stuff with the wrong people, worked extremely hard to support myself, and wouldn't trade those early experiences for anything in the world.

I attended a high school that was not explicitly billed as an "early college" program, but was sort of a hybrid between college and high school. It was a boarding school, with a campus somewhat similar to a university campus -- in fact, it was located on the campus of a university, though we had our own specific area. Academically, courses worked on a similar structure to college courses. We were on a semester system much more than traditional American high schools are. Courses met for longer than a traditional high school class, and usually not daily. For example I had Art History Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8AM till 9:45. Courses offered were much more similar to college courses, though of course all the usual high school classes were available, as we were a public high school. But we had Art History and Conversational Spanish and Differential Equations and 19th Century Irish Literature. It was a lot more like the sorts of courses a college freshman or sophomore would take, rather than the English II and Algebra that are typical of high school. Most of the teachers were PhDs. They approached teaching much like they would an introductory college course. We students were treated like adults, for the most part. No "hall passes", no asking permission to use the restroom, no raising your hand in discussion sections. Most teachers were to be addressed as Dr. Lastname, though a few -- especially in arts courses -- wanted to be on a first name basis with us. There were virtually no Mr. This and Mrs. Thats. It was assumed that we would complete assignments without having to have our "homework checked", that we'd come to class prepared to discuss that day's reading, and that everyone had basic skills like how to do library research or write a bibliography. In terms of how it compared, academically? My high school was far more rigorous than the Catholic high school I started out in or either of the two universities I attended. Adjusting to the low expectations of my college professors was actually one of the harder parts of university life. I was an arts/humanities/social sciences student (focused on the arts in high school, ultimately majored in a soc sci field), but a lot of friends went into STEM fields. Most of them were ahead of the game in terms of coursework, due to AP exams and simply having been exposed to math and science at levels students from typical schools hadn't. The STEM-oriented alums from my high school seem to have done better for themselves as adults "on paper" (in terms of prestigious careers, salaries, socio-economic status) than we artsy kids. Though for the most part the artsy kids did well, too. While our school did not award college credit, it did offer plenty of AP courses, and most courses that mapped well to an AP exam were taught with that test in mind. If it matters, I attended http://lsmsa.edu/. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to almost any gifted student looking for something a little bit beyond the traditional high school experience. The other "state math and science" schools are also apparently fantastic, though as an artsy kid I'm not sure what would have been there for me, specifically.

how the curriculum was structured? It was one year that you did as a 13 or 14 year old (or, more rarely , 12). In that year, you had teachers for history, english, physics and pre-calculus. In the spring of that year, you enrolled in one normal college course. After that you were fully marticulated into the university it was associated with and pretty much everyone could be part of the college honors program, which was pretty competitive to get into otherwise. If you also attended regular high school or regular college, how did the early college curriculum compare in scope and rigor? I skipped eighth grade and had one year of regular high school and then had five years of regular college after the program. The program was much, much harder than regular high school and considerably harder than a lot of regular college. What was the workload like, and what sort of guidance or support was there? I did about 4-5 hours of homework every day. Some people did less than that, but everyone worked hard. There was a counselor for the program and we had quite a few different sessions about things associated with entering college, dealing with stress, all of that. - In academic terms but also social and professional terms, how did your nontraditional college experience affect later studies, work, or (if you're comfortable discussing it) your personal maturation? I developed some crazy study skills, which proved very helpful in a lot of different ways both in college and further down the line. It was a little odd being a fifteen year old freshman, but it wasn't too traumatic. - If you ended up studying a hard science or some other field that has a pretty structured sequence of undergraduate education, how did starting earlier affect you? NA. Psychology and Art double major here. - Who were your classmates? What motivated you all to sign up for this? Looking back, did you get what you were looking for? I had fifteen classmates. I don't remember really talking to them about why they signed up though I think it is fair to say that most of us were smart and not super popular, though not necessarily anywhere near as smart or unpopular as you might expect.

I did dual-enrollment in high school. I started in ninth grade by taking a single course, but eventually shifted to taking all my courses at the community college. The way it worked, I had to still be enrolled in seven classes a semester. If I took a course at the college, I could have a free period in high school that day. I started off at a small regional community college, and later moved and attended a much more academic one in a large city. My tuition and books were completely paid for by my school districts - I only had to pay for transportation. At one point, I looked into transferring to a university, but could not afford tuition. I started taking courses by what seemed interesting and they really varied in difficulty for me. The final for an Intro. to Psych class was a group project where we gave a speech about a movie, for an Intro. to Humanities course I had to write a 12 page research paper in the first 6 weeks. The only major problem I had was that I was never instructed in MLA style and citations or library research prior to being assigned many papers. Yet, the workload was very manageable for me. To be honest, I usually did a lot less work for college classes than my high school ones and definitely less work than my friends in the International Baccalaureate program. I took a lot of courses during the summer semester, so I was set to graduate a year early. By my senior year (when I was 16), I took all my classes at the community college. I set up a schedule where I went to school from 4-9pm three days a week, and goofed off the rest of the time. I enjoyed the course structure, really liked getting to know the older & mostly non-traditional students, and especially liked being able to smoke on campus. I was always the youngest person there, but never told anyone how old I was. I graduated high school at 17 with all my general education requirements completed. Support wise, there really wasn't anyone but my high school guidance counselor. I never attended any sort of orientation and was completely unaware of the community college services. I definitely missed out on normal high school. I wasn't in any clubs or groups (somehow advancing a year made me ineligible for NHS). There was a weighted GPA for dual-enrollment courses, so I graduated with a 4.45 GPA. Afterwards, I took a year off due to family obligations before signing up for a state school. Attending university wasn't really much different for me. I felt pretty mature already, and never really clicked with other students. I didn't stay in the dorms or attend any school functions and worked full-time to pay for school. I was 18-20 when in college, but pretty much acted like a non-traditional student. After getting my BA (in English), I took a year off, couldn't find a decent job, so I started pursuing my MLS. I was definitely the youngest person in my program and didn't have the experience that most of my classmates had, so I think that held me back a bit. It's been more of a struggle to be accepted in my field, but now that I'm a couple years older it's not really an issue. The whole reason I signed up for this was because I hated high school and was bored. There were a couple different options for me (early enrollment in a university, IB, AP classes), but this was the cheapest and easiest. In hindsight, I guess I'm glad I missed out on a lot of high school BS. However, if I slowed down I probably would have gotten to enjoy life a bit more and would probably have pursued other academic avenues.

I'm BeeDo's sister, and I mentioned http://ask.metafilter.com/234160/Have-a-platonic-nonalcoholic-drink-with-me#3391885 that I could compare our experiences. We were both eligible for our city's Talented and Gifted magnet high school. We also both had the opportunity to switch to TAMS at the start of our junior year of high school. BeeDo decided on TAMS, while I remained at the magnet high school. Some of the reasons include: 1. When I looked at the program it wasn't as developed as when BeeDo looked into it. (I'm 5 years older.) 2. I wasn't really ready to live away from home. When it was time for me to go away to college two years later I LOVED it, but I just wasn't ready to live on my own at 15. 3. While I can't say that I loved high school, I liked it ok, and my high school already had the benefit of being a small group of people (~120 students) who were very academically focused, so I felt like I fit in. 4. My high school offered a wide range of AP classes and was pretty challenging, plus I didn't really have any desire to finish college early, considering I was already the youngest person in my grade. 5. I didn't really have an interest in college level math and science. Twenty years (for me) on and I don't have any regrets. I think BeeDo and I ended up pretty comparable academically and socially. We both have good nerdy jobs: me as a university librarian and him as an engineer for a pretty cool company, and we both have good social lives. I think each of us made the right decision, but I also think we could have swapped and not really ended up too differently.

You can compare my experience with Electric Elf, because we seem to have been at the same university though I went a few years later.

I attended to the local community college through a program called Running Start (which I think is Washington State wide) '96-'98. The program paid for classes (and if you qualified as low income, textbooks) but just put you in college with everyone else. I got about a year and a half's worth of transferable credits that I was able to apply to my four-year college I attended after. My best friend actually got her AS through the program, and did just two years of four year college. My husband took only math classes through the program and wasn't able to transfer any of them to his science school, but was glad for the experience. My sister took some courses, but I think was also unable to transfer them, but still happy for the chance to get out of high school and finish a bit early. I don't know how many of my friends were able to transfer credits, but I know everyone was happy to be out of high school and happy to get college credit (and tuition free, at that). - Who were your classmates? Basically everyone who would go to a community college -- people who can't afford college, didn't do well enough in high school to get into college, those going back to school while working, smart high school students, or people studying for a specific trade. I didn't find being a different age from some of my classmates to be a bad experience. I had both Running Start friends, whether from my high school or met at my college, and I had friends in class in a range of ages. I actually found when I went to four year college that I preferred night classes because there was more of a range of ages there, not as rigid with the 18-22. When some classmates are forty or sixty, whether you're seventeen versus twenty is so much less relevant. What motivated you all to sign up for this? If you also attended regular high school or regular college, how did the early college curriculum compare in scope and rigor? What was the workload like, and what sort of guidance or support was there? I was bored in high school and while okay at making friends, not great at being part of groups, like to eat lunch with each day. Community college classes were both more interesting and so much shorter. In three hours, I could take all my classes for the day; on the city bus to college I could do all my reading; I could finish my homework by the time my friends were home from school. (So I guess it wasn't super hard, just more interesting.) - how the curriculum was structured? The community college curriculum was not changed for us, but we needed to work with a guidance counselor to make sure that the classes we chose mapped to the high school course we needed credit for. The credit mapping was often weird, such as we got a full credit in US history 1, when we only needed a half credit, but also needed a half credit in US history 2, so got the full credit in it. - In academic terms but also social and professional terms, how did your nontraditional college experience affect later studies, work, or (if you're comfortable discussing it) your personal maturation? It made me happier working on academic things -- I think I would have checked out more had I stayed in high school. It didn't affect my later studies or work particularly -- being a year and a half younger than people wasn't really noticeable by that age. I don't know about personal maturation, but I didn't have any trouble dating at community college or in college (and married midway through grad school). Looking back, did you get what you were looking for? Yes. I found interesting work and people and it was so much easier to be happy. I highly recommend it to anyone unhappy in high school.