Reply to Is there such a thing as too much acceleration?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's not bad, it's just not good by itself.

If your kid is the top math student in their school, that will be noted in recommendations. If not, than being overaccelerated whike falling behind in ability/achievement is a missalocation of effort.

Compare going to community college for a limited quality version (compared to the elite school or honor college programs this kid will be interested in) of Linear Algebra or Complex Analysis or Number Theory or Algebra, as online classes or an extra commute, with college students classmates who don't have the same mathematical aptitude, and then going to university and meeting a bunch of classmates who know each other from HS and are better prepared for the university courses,

vs the alternative of being on the more common (but still rare) highly accelerated pace on the  regular school honors ladder, but going much deeper every year with "contest math", which in practice is a really a nice preview of that same college level material, while also being more social and fun for math-loving kids doing math with their peers.  Or doing a research project with a mentor or a online yearlong EC program with a cohort.

The kids and parents who think they are hyper elite because no one else in town is as advanced in school math, and school math is all they do, have a rude awakening when they get to college and realize how much education they missed.

Now, all this is for math people. On the other hand, if your kid doesn't care that much about math but wants to bang out requirements for CS or engineering and graduate early or double major and not need much math for career, sure, play the credits game. But the credits won't help with admissions. [/quote]

Well, yeah. But school math is super different from competition math. The problems on the AMC, AIME, USAMO, are just very very difficult versions of things on the high school syllabus (algebra, geometry, etc). Whereas these accelerated kids are learning entirely new topics that don't show up in competition math. Competition math also prioritizes tricks, logic, seeing patterns and puzzles, etc (plus speed, obviously). It's like comparing apples to oranges. And I don't think that kids who excel at competition math necessarily do well in school math, and vice versa. [/quote]

Unless you call knowledge of theorems "tricks", there are no tricks in USAMO (or AIME), not to mention the TSTST/TST/APMO and other IMO qualifying exams. And most of my MOPper kid's friends are excellent at school and advanced math. One is tops (in all subjects) at a top East coast private boarding, one got into MIT as a junior, one took undergraduate topology and real analysis at his state flagship as a senior, one did differential equations in 9th (NoVA) etc etc. [/quote]

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