I've found that for my elder son, his pace in math slowed greatly when he got to material that was new for him and abstract (algebra, in his case). If your son is mastering the material, I suggest that you keep moving ahead.

I earned a PhD in physics and studied a lot of math, and I disagree with this advice. Don't slow a kid down in math, because there is always more to learn if the interest is there. If a 12yo (say) masters calculus, he/she can move on to multivariable calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, complex analysis, scientific computing, etc.

I've had two 5-year-old boys enjoy chess. You can try checkers first. Watching her older brothers, my 3.5 yo girl demands to play and makes legal moves about 2/3 of the time.

My son, now 7, has enjoyed Boy's Life (published by the Boy Scouts) since before he turned 6. Can anyone comment on the Girls Scouts' magazine?

Good grief. You are posting in the "accelerated learner" AKA "gifted" forum of WTM. Your assumptions about algebra and puberty may be true for most kids, but as a statement about ALL kids they are BUNK. If your son has mastered arithmetic, let him try algebra. If he doesn't like it or won't do it, back off -- there is no hurry. But if he likes it in small doses -- as does my 7yo, keep moving through algebra. We use EPGY Beginning Algebra and Algebra for Dummies (book and workbook). My 7yo loves to read the LoF Beginning Algebra book, and I have promised to buy further volumes when, and only when, he has shown that he can do the problems, not based on his physical development. I plan to circle back later with the Dolciani series, which has intermediate and harder questions (labelled "B" and "C").

Nmoira, Thanks for your informative message. We are in the same boat -- our 7yo son is ready for algebra. Douglas Downing has a series of books "(Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus) the Easy Way" that you could consider. I wrote about them in the thread http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189912 My son has browsed the books. We generally leave lots of books around and let him read what he wants.

Math Kangaroo (problems for grades 2-8) http://www.mathkangaroo.org/2010page/Clark/clark/pdb/#PastContests

If you want to be a real jerk, ask the bookless parents, "It appears your children don't like to read much, so I assume they won't be going to college. What are their career plans?" Of course, I would not say that to anyone, but a society where fewer people reason in their leisure time is NOT one where an ever-higher fraction of people should be going to college.

Please excuse some general commentary before answering your question, but I really dislike the idea of holding someone back for perceived social/emotional reasons. No one is going to force your son to live in a co-ed dorm before he is ready, and it is possible to take community college classes and/or online classes while living at home. My 7yo son read the "Manga Guide to Physics" several times when I purchased it for him, so I recommend it.

Questions and answers for Canadian Mathematics Competition, grades 7-12 from the late 1990s onward, are at http://www.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/past_contests.html .

Oklahoma State K-12 Distance Learning Academy http://k12.okstate.edu/

Please add schools not on the list. Indiana University High School http://iuhighschool.iu.edu/ North Dakota Center for Distance Education https://www.ndcde.org/Home.aspx University of Nebraska Online Distance Education http://online.unl.edu/ UT(exas) Online High School http://www.utexas.edu/ce/k16/ut-high-school/overview/ Oklahoma University High School http://ouhigh.ou.edu/ EPGY (Educational Program for Gifted Youth) Online High School (of Stanford) http://epgy.stanford.edu/ohs/

I am a chess master, and my boys each learned how to play before they turned 5. If kids are going to play each other by email (or read a chess book), learning something called "algebraic" chess notation is useful. There are explanations online. A typical game could start 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 White started by moving his king's pawn two squares, Black reciprocated, White moved his king's knight, and Black moved his queen's knight. There is a U.S. Chess Federation with a web site and a junior membership that includes a magazine.

If a parent chooses to homeschool a child, and the student does not have external evaluations of the student's work (Mom's grades for the student are not truly "third-party"), it should not be surprising that the bar for standardized tests is set higher. That "discimination" seems rational and legal to me and is not on a par with racial discrimination in college admissions.

Are there math books that cover the concept of infinity for an elementary school child? Little Buddy (LB), my 5yo, asks me some math questions: LB: What is the biggest number? Me: Infinity LB: What is infinity plus one? Me: Infinity LB: No, it's infinity plus one. LB: What is two times infinity? Me: Infinity LB: No, it's two times infinity. LB: What is one minus infinity? Me: Minus infinity. LB: (agrees)

I agree with you. Another advantage of the SCORE is that it is an achievement test accepted by the Davidson Young Scholars program. I believe you live in MA, like me. Any ideas on how children can take the SCORE test?

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/25/the-real-cost-of-college-textbooks?hp Why do new college textbooks cost so much? It's a perennial complaint, but with the growing concerns over student debt levels and the spiraling costs of higher education generally, students and their parents are not the only ones asking that question. New federal regulations aimed at textbook pricing went into effect this month. Publishers will now "unbundle" college textbooks from accompanying materials like workbooks and CD's, allowing them to be bought separately. The publishers' representatives will also have to tell the college faculty member how much a textbook costs when they make a sales pitch -- the idea being that professors should be aware of what students will have to pay. The book publishers supported the legislation. But a number of experts on the economics of textbook marketing said it will have little impact. How onerous is the cost of textbooks, whether in print or digital, for students? Do colleges have a stake in keeping the prices high? What are the factors that determine what the publishers charge and what students end up paying? <further discussion at link; my comments below> Many math textbooks, for subjects such as Algebra I or calculus, cost $100 or more (list price) and have more than 1000 pages. I doubt that textbooks need to be so expensive and so big, and I wonder if the huge books are actually read. Math books aimed at homeschoolers and for adults studying independently tend to be shorter and less expensive.

Your comments about the NUMBER of poor whites who apply is IRRELEVANT to the finding that is bothering people, which is about the ACCEPTANCE RATE of students.

Thanks to LuckyMama for the info about the Common Data Set. Looking at Harvard's http://www.provost.harvard.edu/institutional_research/Provost_-_CDS2008_2009_Harvard_for_Web_Clean.pdf I see in question C7 that officially, academic GPA is considered, but class rank is NOT considered . So the use of class rank is less common than I thought.

Your moniker on WTM may be appropriate :001_smile:, but you may be right. I was 2nd in my class of almost 500 (472 IIRC).

Colleges care about their U.S. News and World Report rankings, which depend in part on their "student selectivity", which depends on the fraction of student in the top 10% and 25% of their classes. How they handle schools which don't rank, I don't know. http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/how-we-calculate-the-college-rankings.html?PageNr=3 Student selectivity (15 percent). A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We factor in the admissions test scores for all enrollees who took the Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT and the Composite ACT score (50 percent of the selectivity score); the proportion of enrolled freshmen (for all national universities and liberal arts colleges) who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes or (for institutions in the universities—master's and baccalaureate colleges) the top 25 percent (40 percent); and the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). The data are for the fall 2008 entering class. In order to better represent the entire entering class, we are now using a value that takes into account the admissions test scores of all entering students who took the Critical Reading and Math portions of the SAT and the Composite ACT score. Previously, we used only the scores of the test that had the majority of students taking it. The scores of the test that the majority of students take are displayed on the ranking table. The College Board's take on the importance of class rank in admissions is at http://professionals.collegeboard.com/guidance/applications/rank . If the rank is available, most colleges look at it.

My kids are in elementary school, so I have not been speaking to admissions officers, but the importance of class rank for college is common knowledge. You could read the book "The Gatekeepers" by NYT education columnist Jacques Steinberg to see how one selective college (Wesleyan in CT) uses class rank. In each applicant's file, test scores and class rank were front and center. College guidebooks do show "what fraction of students who attend college X were in the top Y% of their class", where Y% may be 5% and/or 25%, and selective colleges don't want these stats to go down, or their rankings will fall.

The "Teachers' Resources Search" at http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/Pageflows/TeachersResource/TeachersResourceController.jpf reviews by Advanced Placement teachers of textbooks and other resources to prepare for AP exams. The "Teachers' Corner for Pre-AP" http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/preap/teachers_corner/index.html reviews resources for earlier courses.

Colleges don't care about high school grades (and thus class rank)? Where did you get that idea? They are either first or second in importance for admissions to selective colleges (the other factor being standardized test scores).

Intelligence, like skin color, height, and many other human characteristics, has a strong genetic component. Very high intelligence cannot be created by a good environment, as demonstrated by adoption studies where the adoptees resemble their biological parents more than their adopted ones in IQ. A bad enough environment can harm a child's IQ, but I doubt anyone reading the WTM forum is providing such an environment.