Reply to Math acceleration: does it actually benefit the kid?

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[quote=Anonymous]If your kid seems unlikely to be math-minded in college and beyond, I wouldn't worry about middle school acceleration one way or the other.  Perhaps worry about good instruction/inputs and how you can supplement, such as via engaging geometry teaching software on-line.  If he's more interested in archaeology and history than math and science per se, you can steer him to math concepts related to these fields (field research techniques, the math behind building monuments in the ancient world, warfare strategy etc.).

Sounds like he's reacting to social pressure as a middle schooler, which probably won't be the case 2 or 3 years hence.  If keeping up with his friends via math acceleration helps him feel good about himself now, no harm done.

I've been interviewing for my Ivy for 20 years, and my spouse interivews for MIT.  What we find about kids who are admitted is that they tend to be all fired up about a subject they love and have run with via extra curriculars.  Plenty of kids take advanced math, and do well, without it doing them a whit of good in highly competitive college admissions.  It's kids with intellectual wattage for their age who tend to get in, often demonstrated through quirkiness (e.g. an unusual, highly focused research project).

I've seen kids who didn't have impecable high school math and science scores/grades (or so they told me) be admitted, probably because they were all excited about applying concepts.  I think of one MoCo kid who was thrilled to be teaching sign language to apes at the National Zoo as an assistant to Natl Geographic researchers, and another who had worked on computer based spatial mapping of small pyramids in Upper Egypt with a U. of Chicago team.  If your kid gets into archeology, he could easily volunteer on "digs" in the US and/or abroad during high school summers.  I did that in Israel and the West Bank as a kid.  For a kid who doesn't plan to become an engineer, singular credentials are more likely to stand out than simply taking BC calculus and not scoring a 5 (meaning not wowing a teacher potentially providing a recommendation).

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