Markedly Early Entrance to College

Across the country, there are very bright twelve-, thirteen-, and fourteen-year-olds who might, with reasonable effort, successfully initiate college-level studies. Many reasons exist why they generally do not, including the paucity of higher education opportunities for them [6] and, perhaps more fundamentally, widespread, deeply rooted, and frequently reasonable concerns about the hazards of rushing development. In individual cases, however, such concerns may be more hampering than helpful. This article suggests that for a constituency of exceptionally talented but quite young students, college enrollment, particularly when undertaken in concert with other able and motivated peers, can be both academically enhancing and facilitative of personal and social growth. The studies about what happens to early entrants in the years after graduation are as reassuring as a relatively small literature can be [4].