Tell me about your experience at an early college program.

February 12, 2013 7:04 PM

Did you attend an early college program or just plain go to college early? What was that like? More detailed questions inside.

- how the curriculum was structured? 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?

- 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?

- 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?

- Who were your classmates? What motivated you all to sign up for this? Looking back, did you get what you were looking for?

posted by d. z. wang to education (27 answers total)

I wrote this question in a very US-centric way, but I'd love to hear foreign perspectives as well. Just give a bit of context because I probably don't know anything about what's normal in your country's educational system.
posted by d. z. wang at 7:05 PM on February 12

I was bored with the level of rigor in my (well-regarded) high school, and I was a misfit to the point that the only person from my high school that I still spend time with is my 9th grade civics teacher.

I did dual enrollment in high school and community college from 14-16. By 15, I was basically just a really young community college student. The workload was a little hard to get used to at first. I was focused on chemistry at that point, and the courses were similarly rigorous to the ones I've seen at other institutions. I was less impressed with anything in the humanities. There was a specific counselor for dual-enrollment students, but I saw her about once a semester. My classmates were generally between 18 and 40, with a few retirees thrown in. Most of the people I studied with were around 27--I wound up being the Annie of a very Community-like study group. I made a few friends close to my age toward the end of my time there, but I got very used to being the kid of the group, which may or may not have been good for me.

I transferred to a 4-year liberal arts college at 17. My age wasn't terribly unusual there, but I think I annoyed a few people by doing the same things I did when I was 10 years younger than anyone else. I got over it quickly and made lots of friends, though. I don't think it was more of an adjustment than anyone else had, despite being a little younger, though it sucked to have to get a friend to buy me cough syrup when I was sick.

I did wind up taking a few years off before I graduated to take care of a family member/remember why I was in college in the first place. It's really hard to make decisions that affect the rest of your life when you're 14 (or 17). I worked a bit in office jobs during that time, and I do think my time as a dual enrollment student helped me in working with actual adults who have jobs. My friends who'd always been in classes with people within 1-2 years of their age don't have the same sort of exposure, and they often have really stupid work problems because of it.

On a related note, when I was 15, I applied to Simon's Rock and was accepted, but I spent about an hour on campus before deciding I wanted nothing to do with anyone there. (Yes, it was a snap judgment and there were probably lovely people I missed out on being friends with, but there was an obvious hard drug culture and a lot of "look at how clever and special I am!" going around. I don't know if these are problems at any other early-entry-specific schools.)
posted by lemonadeheretic at 7:43 PM on February 12

I went to college at 17 with a full year's worth of AP credit that I transferred in immediately. I studied chemistry and biochemistry and wound up just bypassing all the regular first-year coursework and going right into organic chemistry and differential equations, etc.

In terms of making progress in my major, this was no problem at all. I studied hard and did really well and finished in three years, picking up an extra minor along the way. I really benefited from attending a very small college where my advanced courses in molecular biology and biochemistry had 5 people in them. So I got plenty of attention when I needed it. The experience of doing the same thing at a larger college might be different.

I went immediately into graduate school, and while that's a different story completely, I don't really think it's great to be a graduate student at 20. I did well in graduate school (biochemistry)--I even placed out of several required courses, but was thrown completely when my supervisor abandoned our lab for a job in industry. I think if I had taken a few years between college and graduate school, I might have had a better perspective on the situation and been a lot less freaked out by it.

Would I do it again? Almost certainly. The college part, at least.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:11 PM on February 12

I went to the TAMS program (Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science). It was an early admittance program, basically you went there instead of your junior and senior year of HS, got a HS diploma and left with 2 years of college credit.


- how the curriculum was structured? 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?


We took college courses. It was probably more difficult than the average college freshman and sophomore experience at that college. Workload was typical for college - something like 15-18 hours of classes I guess.


- 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 personally loved it. I don't think it actually put me "ahead" that much except that without it I might have done quite poorly in a normal high school and basically done nothing afterwards. A lot of my friends kind of ended up that way. Smart and under-acheiving.


- 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?


I did electrical engineering, math and later (some) computer science. I had not planned on doing ANY of that when in high school - I wanted to be a lawyer and later probably a politician. I thought I was sort of cheating these schmucks at the school by getting an early college admission but not really planning to do math and science. Joke was on me, I liked math and science.


- Who were your classmates? What motivated you all to sign up for this? Looking back, did you get what you were looking for?


My classmates were just other students the same age as me, from all over texas. I liked some, didn't like some, loved others. Did I get what I was looking for?

Look: no 15 year old knows what they're looking for. Probably no 18 year old knows what they're looking for. I have complicated feelings about college.

I *loved* my experience at TAMS. But I was not really ready for college and I don't think most 18 year olds are either. Would I recommend it to someone like me? Probably. Do I think it is necessarily a good idea? I don't know. Maybe not. How would I know though? I did what I did, I don't know what the other stuff would have been like.

My academic performance at TAMS sucked a little. I didn't really "get" college until I was older and grew up a little.

I wonder if there are other TAMSters on metafilter. I sure do run into them a lot in other places. (There are roughly 200 texan kids in the program per year, since like 1990 or something like that)
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:58 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

You didn't ask about this, but your profile lacks the information - under-aged college freshman year is going to be drastically different depending on whether you're (hetero) male or female.

- all admitted students were students and were held to the same standards. No preferrentialism. Of course, different schools (now) might have support programs available.

- I'm not one myself, but from observation, most female youth admittancees leave within a year. Youth male admittancees are inside the "late bloomers" bellcurve.

- Depends; do you enjoy reveling in being a young prodigy?

- I may very well be well off-base here, but, how popular are you wrt to your school's yearbook? If you're popular now, you might eke it out in "college" or wither and burn in a flash. Otherwise, it could be a lonely journey.
posted by porpoise at 9:12 PM on February 12

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.)
posted by angst at 9:21 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

I attended an early college high school affiliated with a major research university, which ended with me being a full time student at the university for my junior and senior years in high school (although I started taking college classes the fall of my sophomore year) and having senior status in terms of number of classes taken.

In my high school, at least, the program was really what you made of it. The high school curriculum was structured such that you could be done taking high school classes after sophomore year, although very few people ended up being completely done with high school at that point. Many students also ended up taking easy English 101 type classes full of fellow high school students at the university. Our high school encouraged us to take these classes because the support system was in place; if you tried to take other classes, you were pretty much on your own. However, if you were willing to seek out the harder classes, you could absolutely succeed in doing so--a few students, including me, ended up taking senior level and graduate classes at the university.

I cannot say enough about how helpful this experience was for me academically. During my time at this school, I learned how to navigate a large bureaucracy, talk to professors, etc, and overall make the system "work for me"--all of which gave me an enormous advantage when it came to do college "for real." I also learned to work hardfor a class, which is something that many of my fellow students at my current college never really had to do in high school. Strictly speaking, few of my credits of transferred; however, as I had studied extensively in two subjects with a rigid curriculum (math and physics) I was able to test into higher classes and skip out of freshman sequences. This was all awesome.

Personally, I don't know if the program made me more mature, but I do know that it led to me hanging out with more mature people. My senior my friend group was made up of upperclassman students at this university; by the time I had graduated, I had essentially moved into my boyfriend's apartment on campus. I really believe that being exposed to such interesting people made me a much happier and friendlier person.

I was very unhappy in middle school both academically and personally, and I chose to go to this school as a form of escape from more traditional education. In effect, I totally skipped the "high school" years of my life, which is exactly what I was looking for at the time. I feel really lucky to essentially have the opportunity to do college twice (who gets to do that?), and I'm really grateful to have found the school. Please feel free to message me with any more questions!
posted by precession at 9:34 PM on February 12

Did you attend an early college program or just plain go to college early? What was that like? More detailed questions inside.


I have a slightly different perspective than the above. I did not attend any structured early college program.

I was a rather gifted child (I hate saying this out loud, but it is true.) that was failing out of high school for various reasons and needed a way out. I got my GED at 16 and went to community college, so I got the same curriculum and guidance the other community college students got. Most under-18s at community college are dual-enrolled, I don't think I met anyone else in my exact situation. I'm in graduate school now, so it worked out.

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?

The 16-18 years were rough. Community college is even less worthy than high school as a friend-making platform. By the time I transferred to an actual 4-year school, the age/life stage gap between the people I was surrounded by and I had closed enough to the point where being 2 years ahead was just a novelty. Then I graduated right when I finally felt like I belonged!

If you are male, this path can be very damaging to your dating development. If you are female, you'll be totally fine. (I can't find the cite right now, but I distinctly remember a study of early-college students that found this to be the biggest gender-specific problem.) There is a strong preference among women for older men, and if you're the youngest guy at a community college, it's going to be a lonely few years unless you meet people outside of it.

Socially, though, you'll probably just fall in with an older crowd by a couple years. You'll turn 21 behind them, but it's manageable. They'll start to get married when you're still fumbling around, but their weddings will be fun. You'll find yourself far ahead career-wise and knowledge-wise compared to your knowledge of how humans interact, which can cause you trouble.

I wasn't in a STEM field, so I can't comment on that. Being ahead of sequence was more common in STEM fields, in my anecdotal observations.

With those specific caveats aside, I wouldn't do anything differently. This path definitely saved my chances at a good life after some teenage screwups, and I'm happy now. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, though, this is a path that requires a lot of self-drive. There was very little handholding.

Feel free to meMail me, since this answer's been rather rambling.
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 10:16 PM on February 12

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.
posted by hazyjane at 10:19 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

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 Louisiana School For Math, Science, and the Arts. 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.
posted by Sara C. at 10:38 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

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.
posted by Sara C. at 10:50 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]

I was admitted to the Early Entrance Program (EEP) at Cal State LA when I was in the 6th grade. IIRC, EEP students attended regular classes with regular college students, although there may have been some sort of extra seminar component. I applied on a lark and was never serious about it because I loved my school, but I did take a few classes over the summer to see if I wanted to enroll. I... didn't. The classes were significantly less rigorous and interesting than those at my prep school. It was really easy, my classmates were generally uninterested, and was clearly inferior to middle/high school in terms of developing skills such as writing, researching, analysis, etc.

(Later, in high school, I took some graduate-level courses. That was awesome.)
posted by acidic at 11:26 PM on February 12

I was homeschooled, so a lot of the logistical questions involved here were irrelevant to me. I didn't participate in any kind of formal program, I just found a local college that permitted high school students to register for classes, which I attended just as if I were a commuter college student. Took six classes my senior year.
posted by valkyryn at 12:18 AM on February 13

I took a full college courseload while finishing my last year of high school. It was technically a program in that they waived some high school courses in exchange for credits I turned in from college courses. The rest of my college courses were whatever I wanted to take (ended up being liberal arts prerequisites). But I was the only high school student that year that took them, and the other students were all undergraduates and they didn't know I was in high school unless I told them. Not exactly a structured program like others are talking about.

The whole thing was a lot of fun, not stressful at all, and really rekindled my interest in learning (which was bored by high school). I'd say that my status as a commuter student had a much bigger impact on me socially than early admission.

The end result was that I fast-tracked myself academically and finished grad school at 22, while my peers were 26-30. All my friends are roughly 3-6 years older than me. It is fairly common for me to be the youngest in a group, and for friends, acquaintances, or coworkers to be shocked by my age, but this hasn't had any negative effects. Also, I feel really competent, which I think has something to do with always exceeding expectations for someone my age, or something.

I was much more naive about real adult things like, for example, dating, but I think that's because I was comparing myself to people 3-6 years older rather than those my age. The year I left school I magically caught up and closed the gap.

I ended up in a STEM grad program and career and it's worked out wonderfully, but not really comparable to a hard science, and my undergraduate degree was in literature. I think, though, I would've been fine if my path took me into a more rigorous discipline early on.
posted by subject_verb_remainder at 1:50 AM on February 13

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.
posted by pie_seven at 5:47 AM on February 13

Did you attend an early college program or just plain go to college early? What was that like?

Yes. I was a PEG student (program for the exceptionally gifted) at Mary Baldwin College. I started my freshman year of college when i was 14, skipping highschool in the process. (The youngest participants in the program were 12, coming out of 6th grade).

- how the curriculum was structured? 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?

First semester they double us up with regular college classes and private tutoring in upper level highschool math or English for those who needed it to improve our fluency. Because even if you are 3 years ahead of your age bracket in math, at 14 that still means you are 1 year behind normal college freshmen. Subsequent semesters our curriculum was that of any other college student. We did not have special academic support beyond the initial private tutoring. We had very hands on RAs who provided us guidance on course registration and such. As the PEG program was legally liable for us as minors, these RAs and the PEG staff put in a social structure similar to what i imagine a boarding school would have. We were in a special dorm and we couldn't go off with someone in a car unless they had been checked out and approved, we got written up if we didnt eat breakfast, we had lights out curfews and such. When you were 16 you could move into the regular college dorms and be free of all the micromanagement of your social and personal life.

- 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?

While I had the smarts to be in college at 14 I certainly didn't have the emotional maturity and that caused some problems. At least I can say my rebellious wild screw up stage that a lot of ppl go through happened at 16 and so had less significant long term ramifications than if i had been 20. People are pretty forgiving when teenagers misbehave. :) In a positive light, the early college experience reinforced my esteem in my aptitude which has carried over into every job and pushed me to succeed.

- 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?
I was a psychology major. n/A

- Who were your classmates? What motivated you all to sign up for this? Looking back, did you get what you were looking for?
fellow gifted teens. I wanted to get away from a dysfunctional and abusive home, and I did, so that was great. I am very glad i went off to Mary Baldwin and everything that followed from it.
posted by TestamentToGrace at 7:33 AM on February 13

At 14 I left a well-regarded and well-funded high school to attend a LARGE flagship state university for 11th and 12th grade. I fulfilled my high school credits by attending university classes full-time, though part-time was also possible. My only high school contact became my awesome guidance counselor.

- how the curriculum was structured? 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?
Chose my classes on regular university schedule and attended as a full-time student. I had the same support as any other student, plus a bit of extra affection and hand-holding if needed because they knew I was in a weird spot. Mostly, I took care of my own business. I even got an on-campus job in semiconductor research! It is what you make of 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?
Later studies - it showed I could handle a university load and probably helped in my admittance to a top-top engineering school for undergrad. I got a lot of transfer credit that let me dabble around in that later school, which is awesome. Work - um, I got work experience and references in major-related fields before many others could have. Personal maturation - I got out of high school early, 'nuff said.

- 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?
Got transfer credit from high school to college for a number of courses, as mentioned above. I used those contacts to build further internship opportunities, but did not do as much as I could have to stay in touch.

- Who were your classmates? What motivated you all to sign up for this? Looking back, did you get what you were looking for?
My classmates at the university were other university students. Most of them had no idea I was a high school student until they asked if we could hang or study together and I said it wouldn't work because my mom would be in to pick me up.

I signed up for this because I was bored shitless and under-challenged at my high school. Going to the university put me in a milieu where I was intellectually challenged, treated as a more-or-less mature individual, and found a bigger and better social atmosphere. I would not change one single part of this experience!
posted by whatzit at 9:26 AM on February 13

I applied to, and ultimately chose to attend the same program acidic mentioned (EEP at CSULA), and my perspective on it was very different. (Not that one of us is right or wrong, just a reminder that the way people perceive and what they get out of a certain program will vary a lot, both on personal factors and on circumstantial ones such as when they go, who else is there at the time, stuff going on in the broader university if there is one, etc. The culture of both the program and the university changed a lot even over the 5 years I was there. Also, I totally get her criticisms--the application process takes place over summer, and summer classes at this university was when the professors and students were particularly, ah, "checked-out". I didn't find it to be all that representative of the school during the regular year.)

- how the curriculum was structured? 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?

The first year of the program was relatively structured, by choice of the program director. Incoming freshmen were asked to sign up for the same sections of English comp, algebra, and a rotating list of other general education requirements of the university. This was meant to be a "bridge"--i.e., we were still kind of sheltered from the university as a whole, with teachers who were familiar with the program, but it was still university coursework and were still earning towards degrees. During the first quarter, we also had an unofficial class that was more or less general study skills, introductions to the mysterious and sometimes arcane university regulations (how to get into a major, where everything was) and admonishments not to fuck up. Actually, looking back, we were simultaneously taking the university's version of that for all freshmen (but in our own section), and an unofficial, program-bound one. Yeah.

Past the first year (I think actually starting from the third quarter of freshman year, for my cohort), we were allowed to choose our own classes, which were just regular university courses, but until our third year we were (1) required to be full-time for at least 3 consecutive quarters at a time (i.e., if you wanted to take off winter quarter for whatever reason, you could, but you'd have to be enrolled for the summer before or after), and (2) we were required to continue attending meetings with the program director and a staff psychologist. Our grades were reported to the director and our parents during those first 3 years as well. All of this was meant to flag for general issues with appropriate workload and degree progress, as well as monitoring for more serious personal or psychological troubles.

DOE regulations also required us to take some extra number of general education courses, apparently to compensate for skipping anywhere from 3-7 years of secondary education. How many courses seemed to change from year to year, because the state DOE had no idea what to do with us. I think for my entering class it was two, which most people wound up doing without trying, either because of major-shopping, misunderstanding requirements, or taking classes for their own interest and enjoyment.

- 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?

The effect on studies and work is somewhat less than you'd think. People tend to view it as a bit of a novelty, but in most cases they quickly move on to the more relevant aspects of your resume (which is generally a relief.) Again, the classes were the same curriculum as the college as a whole, so our academic experience was much the same as the "regular" college students (so much of typical high school curriculum is filler.) Also, the personal maturation aspect is one that I'm still sorting out; so are most of my classmates. A few months ago, this topic came up on a Facebook thread (!). It mainly talked about the disconnect we have with our new peers in grad school or the working world who had a more traditional experience, but also touched on the general topic of maturing in an unusual, somewhat higher-stake environment. I posted this:

"I had a Gtalk conversation with [classmate] a while back where one of us said something to the effect of "EEP is a great replacement for high school, but a shitty one for college," which fits. I don't regret going; it was definitely the right place for me at the time. I regret some of the stupid mistakes I made, and I sometimes wonder if they'd have had the same effect on my life if I'd had a few more years to fuck up without real consequences, but who's to say I'd have done the same things or learned the same lessons?

I do kind of get [another former student's] point about missed social context, but I also sort of wonder how much of that is because at our age, most of our peers are recently out of college, and thus spend more time talking/thinking/comparing experiences than people who are a few years removed. In five years, that may be replaced by comparing grad school/first job/general 20-something shenanigans, and by then we would be "caught up." (In theory, anyway.)"

- 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?

It didn't, really. I graduated in about the same amount of time that traditional students in the major did, I started a PhD program the following year, and right now I'm about the same age as incoming students, but I'm several years in. Once you're in your 20s, a 3-4 year age difference doesn't have much functional effect. (Exception: I turned 21 during my second year of grad school, and it was basically treated it like a drinking holiday, up there with St. Patrick's.)

- Who were your classmates? What motivated you all to sign up for this? Looking back, did you get what you were looking for?

I was unusual, even among kids who applied to my program. I hated middle school both socially and academically. I researched the program by myself, and had to convince my parents to let me apply (I was actually living in another state at the time. Few things have as much drive as a miserable 12-year-old.)

Most of my friends and classmates felt out of place, either socially or academically or both (and in theory, this need was considered a necessary component for admission, alongside with academic ability and at least a modicum of maturity; in practice, the university dictated minimum class size, and the standards were frequently relaxed beyond what the program director might have preferred, but people who weren't a good "fit" usually left of their own accord.) What we were to gain by attending was both a more rigorous curriculum and a better, more accepting, more academically-focused social environment.

The extent to which people wanted one or another varied, a lot. I know some people who absolutely thrived in the academic opportunities, won big scholarships, took on research opportunities, went on to top tier graduate schools, and I know others who kind of floundered, hopped from major to major, got passing grades but not stellar ones. I know people who thrived socially, made some of their best friends of their lives in the program; I know those who preferred to associate with their middle- and high-school friends; I know some who actually integrated really well into the social environment of the non-early entrant college students and mostly hung out with the older students.

Like most things in life, it is what you make of it.
posted by kagredon at 9:45 AM on February 13

I went to summer school at ASU between my Junior and Senior Years in high school.

I was kind of immature and not really ready to deal with the large lecture halls. Also, like an idiot, I scheduled my classes for 8 AM.

So...I passed, but just barely.

Also, in the last half of my senior year, I took an EMT class at Phoenix College. I got great grades, and loved the class. I had a good time with my classmates.

Although I took the test, I couldn't be an EMT because I wasn't 18 yet.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:54 AM on February 13

Oh, I should clarify: after our third year, we were considered to be "fully matriculated", which meant we were effectively regular university students, and no longer had to attend program-specific meetings or have our grades or class selection monitored (though we were still welcome to use the resources of the program and attend social events, and a fair number of people did.)
posted by kagredon at 12:06 PM on February 13

I used the joint enrollment program in my state to complete my junior and senior year of high school at a local community college. My parents both teach at that college, and apparently I heard them discussing the program one day when I was 11 and declared that I would take all of my classes that way when I could. That was about when I started being bullied in school, so I was looking for an escape. I also had big dreams of attending very prestigious universities and it was clear that my school wasn't going to get me there (nor was there a good private school in the area or money for me to pay for a private school and one of those fancy universities).

The biggest trouble with it was the administrative headache. The way the program was set up, high school credits were based on hours in class, and each college class counted for only about .6 of a high school class. I had to take two college classes to satisfy each high school requirement. Also, math and science classes taken at the college couldn't be counted toward high school requirements for some reason. Luckily, we only needed 3 science classes to graduate, so I doubled up on science classes my sophomore year, before starting at the college. Because I skipped right to algebra in 6th grade, there was technically no way for me to earn the high school math credit I needed to graduate without going back and taking algebra again, after I'd taken all the calculuses, differential equations, and linear algebra, but nobody made a fuss about that.

It took some heated discussions between my parents and school administrators to make this all happen, and these days they've added new rules to make it more complicated. My state gives a HOPE scholarship that pays in-state tuition to any student with at least a B average. When I was in school (I graduated in 2002), joint enrollment classes didn't count against completed hours for HOPE; these days, they do. I also created a bit of a ruckus when I became valedictorian but decided to skip graduation (don't worry, I informed them well in advance and thought I had managed to give up the title). Now, they've changed the rules so that a student who doesn't take a certain number of classes at the high school during their last two years can't be valedictorian.

I went on to four years at a prestigious university--where I went ahead and started taking grad classes during my last two years--and an even more prestigious grad school and honestly, those two years at the community college were my favorite of my education. I picked challenging classes and had fantastic teachers. The classes were at the same level as the 100 and 200 level classes I took at the fancy university, and I had little trouble with the transition. I was already used to being graded on the basis of a couple of big exams rather than the frequent tests we had in high school. I had to pick classes that would fulfill high school requirements, so I was required to take a year of American lit when I probably would have taken something else, but I generally took what I wanted. I took the introductory physics and chemistry sequences, three psychology courses, sequences in German and Spanish, and math including calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra. I took some AP tests on the classes I took and did well on all of them.

Socially, I also preferred it to my "real" university experience. I hung out with the nerdy students from my physics and math classes, including many nontraditional students who were 10+ years older than me. It was a welcome change from high school and as the introverted/loner sort, a commuter campus suited me much better than a residential one.

I occasionally come across people who think that my high school education was less valuable than what I would have received if I had gone to a private prep school, instead. One person basically accused my parents of child abuse for not moving or sending me to boarding school instead of the schools I attended. I look at the classes I took, how much I enjoyed the experience, and how little it cost and laugh at those people.
posted by capsizing at 12:51 PM on February 13

Experience is old (1995-96) so probably not up to what's happening today. I attended the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in place of my senior year in high school through a state program. Most people I know who have done this went to one of the local community and technical colleges for a few general education classes or to start on a trade-specific course. There were some classes I had to take in order to get the high school's graduation requirements done. I was enrolled in the same first- and second-level courses that everyone else in the university could take--no classes were specific to high school students. We did have our own separate advising office.

I did it primarily to get free college. At the time, all costs were paid for by the state, including textbooks. I also was bored with high school.

I think your main difference with these programs is not early college vs normal college, it's the break between commuter program/residential program. I did not do well in the traditional residential program I transferred to after graduating from high school. The structure I had set up as a commuter student (9-12 credit load, working 8-35 hours a week) honestly helped me do better in school. It did let me get the general education requirements of the next university mostly completed, freeing me up for a more intensive STEM credit load.

I did not have the experience others in this thread did about finding intellectual peers, etc. It's an enormous state university. If you are one of those OMG geniuses! interested in that sort of thing, no, the U of M is not going to give you that as an undergrad. I did meet plenty of interesting people mostly between the ages of 16 and 24 and the main drag on my social life was not being underage--I turned 18 fairly early in the school year--but having most of my new friends commuting to school from 20 miles from Mpls in the other direction and then having completely opposite work schedules.

Had a great time, got exactly what I wanted out of it, and don't regret doing it--but this particular university experience definitely was for the self-directed. I had a completely different experience from friends at my high school who did the same thing at the community college or the smaller private universities in St. Paul that participated in the program. They had cars and didn't work. I used the bus and did. Some of the schools had more hands-on advising than the U's program did. The one guy I knew from my school who went to the U hated it and I think he went back to high school after a semester.
posted by Electric Elf at 1:01 PM on February 13

I went to TAMS as well, like RustyBrooks. I also loved it. I can't imagine not having gone, I would have gone nuts with more high school.

The only regret I have is that when I got to college I tried to be too much "been here, done this." Hours-wise I was a junior, but socially I should have embraced freshmanhood. I changed majors my "senior" year, and I think I could have avoided that if I'd been less snooty about how ahead of the game I was.

I did graduate with a degree in the sciences (after changing from an engineering program). I've got a great life and job so it all worked out. But the one thing I wish someone has knocked into my head at 18 was: "Take a deep breath and start over. Really think about what studies you want to pursue and why. If you don't end up using what credits you earned at age 16-17, who cares? It isn't a race."

Had I followed my own future advice, I think I'd have been a happy electrical engineering student instead of an unhappy aerospace one.
posted by BeeDo at 3:37 PM on February 13

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.
posted by Margalo Epps at 7:16 PM on February 13

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.
posted by whatzit at 3:41 AM on February 14

I'm BeeDo's sister, and I mentioned in your previous thread 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.
posted by MsMolly at 7:55 AM on February 14

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.
posted by galvanized unicorn at 11:59 AM on February 14