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Anonymous wrote:Interesting. I did not know colleges looked at a graduating seniors’ ages and said - “well older kids in the graduating class have better grades, better test scores, did more and are way more accomplished, but they are 10 months older so we will not accept them and instead we will go with the kid who gets lower grades and did less.

Certainly that will work with athletics too. My daughter played college soccer for 4 years. I am sure that coaches are out looking for younger players who are not as accomplished when they are recruiting.

Also, I'm not aware of a special award for graduating high school as the youngest in class. Is there a "most educated with the fewest days on Earth" award out there?

There's no official, on-paper, award for that. It's an award in and of itself. The more you know at a given point in time, the better. And actually, in a way, there is an award, just not a cut-and-dry one. A non-redshirted kid will have a high school diploma at 17 when, at that given point in time, they wouldn't have a high school diploma had they been redshirted. A nont-redshirted kid will have a bachelor's degree at 21 when. at that given point in time, they wouldn't have a bachelor's degree had they been redshirted.

He never fit in with kids in his class, his friends were the kids in the grade below, and he never liked school and struggled to get a 4 year degree. Another year of maturity would have served him well, not a barely earned HS diploma at 17 that only got him into a lackluster school. So, what's the point?

Why didn't he just take a gap-year between high school and college, so that he could've graduated college at 22 instead of 21?

I think the fear is real that if a kid takes a year off they won't ever go back to school.

That fear would only be legit for enabling parents. When I told my parents I wanted to take time off to work before going to college, they made it crystal clear that I had one, and only one, year before I had to go to college. Parents who put their foot down shouldn't have to worry about their kids never going to school.

Oh, come on. A high school grad taking a gap year is an adult. Parents can't force anything. The peer pressure of everyone going off to college together has an influence. After a gap year, that pressure is significantly diminished.

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Anonymous wrote:I have a smart athletic kid.

All the competitive sports leagues are by age so redshirting doesn’t give an old kid any advantage. They’ll just be playing with kids who are a grade ahead instead of their classmates. The one exception would be things like high school football—and there’s no way in hell I would allow my kid to play given the risk of brain injury—so I really don’t care if someone wants their freshman to be huge so they can make team.

As far as academics goes, the smart tend to take more challenging classes and be the younger in their math or science classes. After elementary school placement is by ability instead of chronological age.

Are young small kids doomed to failure? No. Would they be better off with the extra year of growth and maturity? Obviously. So, if you have a choice, then the choice is easy.

This brings us, once again, back to the original question. Why is it that of the parents who do have that choice, the vast majority still don't redshirt?

For lots of reasons: 1) $$$$, 2) they weren't aware it was an option 3) they are convinced their child is a little genius and would run circles around everyone else 4) they think it's cheating 5) school didn't allow it. The reasons vary, you'd have to ask someone why they didn't to get their reasoning.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a smart athletic kid.

All the competitive sports leagues are by age so redshirting doesn’t give an old kid any advantage. They’ll just be playing with kids who are a grade ahead instead of their classmates. The one exception would be things like high school football—and there’s no way in hell I would allow my kid to play given the risk of brain injury—so I really don’t care if someone wants their freshman to be huge so they can make team.

As far as academics goes, the smart tend to take more challenging classes and be the younger in their math or science classes. After elementary school placement is by ability instead of chronological age.

Are young small kids doomed to failure? No. Would they be better off with the extra year of growth and maturity? Obviously. So, if you have a choice, then the choice is easy.

This brings us, once again, back to the original question. Why is it that of the parents who do have that choice, the vast majority still don't redshirt?

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Anonymous wrote:Interesting. I did not know colleges looked at a graduating seniors’ ages and said - “well older kids in the graduating class have better grades, better test scores, did more and are way more accomplished, but they are 10 months older so we will not accept them and instead we will go with the kid who gets lower grades and did less.

Certainly that will work with athletics too. My daughter played college soccer for 4 years. I am sure that coaches are out looking for younger players who are not as accomplished when they are recruiting.

Also, I'm not aware of a special award for graduating high school as the youngest in class. Is there a "most educated with the fewest days on Earth" award out there?

There's no official, on-paper, award for that. It's an award in and of itself. The more you know at a given point in time, the better. And actually, in a way, there is an award, just not a cut-and-dry one. A non-redshirted kid will have a high school diploma at 17 when, at that given point in time, they wouldn't have a high school diploma had they been redshirted. A nont-redshirted kid will have a bachelor's degree at 21 when. at that given point in time, they wouldn't have a bachelor's degree had they been redshirted.

He never fit in with kids in his class, his friends were the kids in the grade below, and he never liked school and struggled to get a 4 year degree. Another year of maturity would have served him well, not a barely earned HS diploma at 17 that only got him into a lackluster school. So, what's the point?

Why didn't he just take a gap-year between high school and college, so that he could've graduated college at 22 instead of 21?

But then he wouldn't have graduated at 21 and missed that important but not real award
He was barely motivated to go to school my parents had to push him. I think the fear is real that if a kid takes a year off they won't ever go back to school. So that wasn't a viable option for someone like him. He would have been happy just being a bartender somewhere. His freshman year at school was hard at times but he found his rhythm by sophomore year, when he was 18 and should have been starting school anyway. My mother says if she knew then what she knew now, she would have redshirted him back in kindergarten.

Well, I don't think anyone who gets a college degree, particularly if they do it in 4 years, has license to say that college was a struggle for them. High schools make it nearly impossible for students to flunk out, so you can almost always graduate no matter how poorly you do. That's not the case in college. Colleges couldn't care less whether you graduate or not. If you struggle in college, you either take longer than 4 years or drop out altogether. In fact, according to these statistic, your brother was more successful than most in college.

https://www.prepler.com/blog/why-do-so-few-u-s-college-students-graduate-in-four-years#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20%E2%80%9CFour%2DYear,bachelor's%20degree%20in%20four%20years.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/19/just-41percent-of-college-students-graduate-in-four-years.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/education/most-college-students-dont-earn-degree-in-4-years-study-finds.html

These statistics are all within the last decade. Taking longer than 4 years to graduate used to be pretty rare. If the poster and her brother grew up during the 20th century, graduating late would've been unheard of.

Cite? I graduated in 1992 in 5 years and it wasn't "unheard of" at all- in fact, I'd say it was the norm in my program (engineering).

Of course there were many, many people with five-year undergraduate degrees in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Anonymous wrote:So glad I never had to worry about this. We have a sept 1st cutoff and all of my kids are sept and oct bdays.

Yes, but OP incorrectly lumps you in with redshirting. I think there is a lot less redshirting than people assume— they are just bad at reading the calendar.

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Anonymous wrote:Again - redshirting has nothing to do with K-5. It matters when kids hit puberty.

That makes no sense. The older two people get, the LESS their age difference matters. The difference between a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old is equivalent to the difference between a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old, which is obviously bigger than the difference between an 11-year-old and a 12-year-old. I understand that a year still makes a huge difference in junior high and high school, but just not as big of a difference as in elementary school. The longer you live, the smaller a fraction a year is of your life.

Getting kids into high school with more physical and mental maturity will help them do better at all aspects of school - academic and social.

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Anonymous wrote:I have a smart athletic kid.

All the competitive sports leagues are by age so redshirting doesn’t give an old kid any advantage. They’ll just be playing with kids who are a grade ahead instead of their classmates. The one exception would be things like high school football—and there’s no way in hell I would allow my kid to play given the risk of brain injury—so I really don’t care if someone wants their freshman to be huge so they can make team.

As far as academics goes, the smart tend to take more challenging classes and be the younger in their math or science classes. After elementary school placement is by ability instead of chronological age.

Are young small kids doomed to failure? No. Would they be better off with the extra year of growth and maturity? Obviously. So, if you have a choice, then the choice is easy.

Anonymous wrote:I have a smart athletic kid.

All the competitive sports leagues are by age so redshirting doesn’t give an old kid any advantage. They’ll just be playing with kids who are a grade ahead instead of their classmates. The one exception would be things like high school football—and there’s no way in hell I would allow my kid to play given the risk of brain injury—so I really don’t care if someone wants their freshman to be huge so they can make team.

As far as academics goes, the smart tend to take more challenging classes and be the younger in their math or science classes. After elementary school placement is by ability instead of chronological age.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m redshirting my July daughter

Ditto. She's 4 and my youngest child and she's not happy about that. She's always the youngest in the class too and she's more immature. Another year of childhood seems like a great gift to give her.

She isn't less mature. You are not comparing her to her actual peers and kids a year younger. You are doing it for her, not you. You aren't giving her an extra year of childhood. You are taking away a year of being an adult and forcing them to continue being a child.

Meh I'd rather my kid enter adulthood mature, ready for the next step, and with confidence than launching them too soon. I'll take my chances with the gift of time rather than roll the dice and find out that it would be an uphill battle and struggle by forcing them before they were ready because of an arbitrary cutoff. You only get one chance to get it right. I know people who regret sending the kids on time when they were young and immature, I don't know anyone who regrets redshirting. It's not robbing them of a year of adulthood, it's making sure they are as ready and a prepared as they can be to get the most out of their education. It's not a race.

To your first sentence, if a 17-year-old who has just graduated high school doesn't feel ready for adulthood, they can just take a gap year before college. If, however, a 17-year-old who has just finished 11th grade is ready for college and bored of high school, they don't really have much choice but to stick out that last year of school.

To your last sentence, if you don't think of education as a race, you should actually be against redshirting. The word "race" implies that everyone finishes at different times. It's true that in most races, the object is to finish first. However, there are some races where the object is to be the last one standing. One notable example of the latter is a competition where everyone starts standing on one leg, and the last person still on one leg wins. Another example is a game where people dive underwater to see how long they can hold their breathe, and the last one still holding their breathe is, again, the winner. Because education is not a race, everyone should start and finish together. Everyone born in 2016 should start K in 2021 and graduate high school in 2034, everyone born in 2017 should start K in 2022 and graduate high school in 2035, everyone born in 2018 should start K in 2023 and graduate high school in 2036, etc.

DCUM antiredshirters are SO WEIRD. Do you understand how the academic calendar works.

I'm sorry. I should've been more clear. Everyone born in year N should start Kindergarten in the fall of year N+5 and graduate in the spring of year N+18.

Are you the weirdo "academic calendars are against natural law" anti-redshirter?

Anonymous wrote:So glad I never had to worry about this. We have a sept 1st cutoff and all of my kids are sept and oct bdays.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m redshirting my July daughter

Ditto. She's 4 and my youngest child and she's not happy about that. She's always the youngest in the class too and she's more immature. Another year of childhood seems like a great gift to give her.

She isn't less mature. You are not comparing her to her actual peers and kids a year younger. You are doing it for her, not you. You aren't giving her an extra year of childhood. You are taking away a year of being an adult and forcing them to continue being a child.

Meh I'd rather my kid enter adulthood mature, ready for the next step, and with confidence than launching them too soon. I'll take my chances with the gift of time rather than roll the dice and find out that it would be an uphill battle and struggle by forcing them before they were ready because of an arbitrary cutoff. You only get one chance to get it right. I know people who regret sending the kids on time when they were young and immature, I don't know anyone who regrets redshirting. It's not robbing them of a year of adulthood, it's making sure they are as ready and a prepared as they can be to get the most out of their education. It's not a race.

To your first sentence, if a 17-year-old who has just graduated high school doesn't feel ready for adulthood, they can just take a gap year before college. If, however, a 17-year-old who has just finished 11th grade is ready for college and bored of high school, they don't really have much choice but to stick out that last year of school.

To your last sentence, if you don't think of education as a race, you should actually be against redshirting. The word "race" implies that everyone finishes at different times. It's true that in most races, the object is to finish first. However, there are some races where the object is to be the last one standing. One notable example of the latter is a competition where everyone starts standing on one leg, and the last person still on one leg wins. Another example is a game where people dive underwater to see how long they can hold their breathe, and the last one still holding their breathe is, again, the winner. Because education is not a race, everyone should start and finish together. Everyone born in 2016 should start K in 2021 and graduate high school in 2034, everyone born in 2017 should start K in 2022 and graduate high school in 2035, everyone born in 2018 should start K in 2023 and graduate high school in 2036, etc.

DCUM antiredshirters are SO WEIRD. Do you understand how the academic calendar works.

I'm sorry. I should've been more clear. Everyone born in year N should start Kindergarten in the fall of year N+5 and graduate in the spring of year N+18.