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How old can you be when you finish high school?


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Does it matter when you finish high school?

I just realized there are at least 5 years of stuff DC will want to learn / take / do and we just started 9th grade. He does a lot of music and that takes up a lot of his time. He also loves math and likes learning it. He has so many things he likes and wants to do. I think with 5 years he could do a lot of it.

But that would mean having him

take an extra year of high school.

We could call it a gap year and he could just keep learning.

BUT when are you supposed to apply for college? The Senior Year?

or the Gap Year? OR...can you just call it a 2nd year of Senior year and apply at the end of that? Or still...at that point rename all the previous years so the last 4 years are high school? Should we call them by those names now? So now I could make DS an 8th grader again, to fit in all the material he wants to do.

I don't know what the right thing to do is; I don't know what colleges care about. If we do 5 more years, he will be 19 at the end of that. Do colleges not consider him for scholarships? Or do they see him as a poor student because he will seem to have repeated a year?

What are the advantages or disadvantages of this? And if it's OK to do the Gap Year, is it OK to apply that year, or will it work against him for scholarships or admission?

He is very bright and hardworking, and tends to test well. The issue here is he wants to do so much (several instruments, tons of extra math, several languages, and needs time to read and so on).

So I guess the bottom line is when

to apply for college and when to graduate him.

Hopefully this isn't a confusing post.

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I don't know what is "officially" correct but here's what happened with my oldest. He applied to his college as a Sr. and was accepted and then later decided to do a gap year (or as we called it a "super senior" year). His college just delayed his admission to a year later. I'm not sure what it would do with scholarships as we didn't have that situation (my dh works at the college so he goes tuition-free). I do know that the college handled it in his case without it being a big deal so I assumed that it was fairly common.

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This is actually pretty common and it is not a problem. There are public school students, typically boys, who started school late and graduate at 19 too. My suggestion would be that you keep records from the time he starts high school and keep it open to make the decision later because sometimes kids mature a lot in high school and have shifting goals.

 

If he's a super good tester you'll want to decide when to place his junior year for the purposes of the PSAT because that's the only year that counts. While a gap year is an option, it is generally simpler as a homeschooler just to use the last four years as the four high school years.

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Thanks for the responses above! Keep the responses coming!!

 

Why can't you graduate him at 18, and he continues to do the things he wanted??

I don't know where to consider him done with High School and he does want to go to college. Once he goes to college he will have to stop all that, buckle down, and focus on one major. If he graduates and just keeps taking high school classes for a year I don't know if the colleges will look at him unfavorably. It sounds like it's possible to just count the last 4 years as high school and that it's not uncommon to graduate at 19.

 

So if anyone else has experiences with Super Seniors, Gap Year students, and 19 year olds please let me know how the colleges took it and whether the DC presented themselves as Super Seniors or Gap Year students.

 

It also sounds like you have to pick which PSAT will count as your junior year PSAT. And then your following year is your official "Senior Year?" And it sounds like it's in your best interest to apply during that official Senior Year? and then if you receive an acceptance you can defer. So what I'm hearing is that applying during the Gap Year / Super Senior Year may have a disadvantage?

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... there are at least 5 years of stuff DC will want to learn / take / do and we just started 9th grade...

 

I don't know where to consider him done with High School and he does want to go to college. Once he goes to college he will have to stop all that, buckle down, and focus on one major.

 

You've received some *great* and helpful responses, so all I will add is -- you will be amazed at how much your DS will change in the next few years, and so your current concern may end up being a non-issue in 4 years:

 

- He may find he WANTS to move on, and will self-limit his interests.

- He may find some interests die off.

- He may find he *does* want to do it all, and will willingly do an extra heavy workload and complete 5 years of work in 4 years and have a lot of credits on his transcript.

- You may find that some of the credits you felt you *must* include in your high school years end up not being so important afterall and you feel able to drop them from *your* plans for DS.

 

So, great to gather info and have an idea of how to handle this, BUT... it may also not even be an issue in 4 years... BEST of luck -- and enjoy your high school journey together! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited by Lori D.
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Thanks for the responses above! Keep the responses coming!!

 

 

I don't know where to consider him done with High School and he does want to go to college. Once he goes to college he will have to stop all that, buckle down, and focus on one major. If he graduates and just keeps taking high school classes for a year I don't know if the colleges will look at him unfavorably. It sounds like it's possible to just count the last 4 years as high school and that it's not uncommon to graduate at 19.

 

So if anyone else has experiences with Super Seniors, Gap Year students, and 19 year olds please let me know how the colleges took it and whether the DC presented themselves as Super Seniors or Gap Year students.

 

It also sounds like you have to pick which PSAT will count as your junior year PSAT. And then your following year is your official "Senior Year?" And it sounds like it's in your best interest to apply during that official Senior Year? and then if you receive an acceptance you can defer. So what I'm hearing is that applying during the Gap Year / Super Senior Year may have a disadvantage?

 

Yes, don't call it a gap year or a super senior year if you have any intentions of trying for NMSQT. Just have him take the PSAT the year before whichever the final year he will be home and call that his Junior year. If he graduates at 19, take his last 4 years of work and call it high school. We are going to do this with my daughter. She went to school for 8th and part of 9th grade. She is a September baby so I put her up a year so she'd be graduating at 17 turning 18 rather than 18 turning 19. Unfortunately it was the wrong thing to do. She has no intention of applying to college in 18 months and has no idea what she'd like to specialize in. She tends to be more of a homebody and just isn't emotionally ready to start thinking about it. So we're throwing out her "9th grade" year and counting from last year on.

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We homeschool through a public school charter, able to select our own curriculum, etc. We will be graduating 2 of ours at 20 years old, and one at 21 based upon learning disability "catch up" needed and English learning needs. We just needed more time. Initially our school called our daughters 5th and 6th this year based upon two years ago what grade level we selected, but we were recently told they must be bumped up a grade because all of a sudden the state is saying we can not have them in the grade they are in. However, our program said it is not at all a problem, and while we will lose a grade here, they will allow us to tack it on the end and have them 5th year seniors. We will almost certainly need that much time to get in all the material we need to cover. We don't want to miss anything and it is worth it because they are both very good students...just need exposure to material. My delayed son absolutely will need the time, and indeed we see that he too can learn if taught differently and we are making up for lost time in his earlier school years when he couldn't take in information in the way it was presented.

 

So, I might end up in the odd situation of having my 9 year old 4th grader skip a year or two of school and graduate early, simply because he is working on all the same material his older siblings are and doing quite well with it (midway through 6th grade math, all language arts are a year ahead), and then having 3 of our others graduating at 20 or 21. Well, at least I have one out of the five who is on a "nrmal" path! Hahaha!

 

Cindy

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