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Is anyone on the 'fire familiar with the TAMS program (Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science) at the University of North Texas?

It's a two-year residential early college entrance program for High School Sophomores. Junior and Senior year is spent taking college courses (predominately math, science) and upon completion earn their HS diploma and a two years of college credit.

My youngest son is a Freshman in HS, and he's considering applying next year.

We have a program like that in Washington called Running Start, In our program you basically take college level courses instead of your high school electives, while still taking the state mandated HS courses. The result is earning your HS diploma while you earn your basic college level class credits. In our program you get roughly the equivalent of a years worth of college credits for the two years you are in the program. It takes a lot of the load off of a first year college student, prepares them in ways that the HS education system cannot, and shaves a year off of their college career living away from home...

I have never seen anyone who enrolled in the program not come out ahead in the end. Well worth it IMO.

It sounds like he would get two full years of credits which will basically get him an AA? Sounds high, and I'd check into the amount of credits he really earns, but a solid path for a kid to go down.

not heard of it but ive yet to see where most any program like this is truly a waste of time and always looks good on transcripts.....whether its better than others available to your son i dont know.....

We have a similar program here in Georgia. We went over to the high school to map out our freshman son's next three years (he's in the gifted program) and I was amazed at what they can take their junior and senior years. It's all the same math and science that I took as a freshman and sophomore engineering student and they receive credit for it. The teacher said it basically covers the freshman year at Georgia Tech. My son isn't interested in engineering so he will be going a different route but for those who are interested in pursuing a STEM major in college it is a great opportunity.

This particular program isn't like the typical HS AP or dual credit program. The kids admitted to the program are attending UNT, primarily taking college courses in math (calculus and higher), bio, chem, physics, etc.

Program consistently has Barry M. Goldwater Scholars, and students that place and win Siemens Westinghouse and Intel competitions.

Apparently colleges like MIT, Harvard, CalTech, Stanford, A&M Engineering, and UT Austin Engineering programs snatch up TAMS graduates and offer full scholarships.

Seeking individuals that have first hand information on the program, or know folks that do.

I did a similar thing when I was in high school. For the second half of my junior year and all of my senior year I took college classes on campus in the afternoons. I took general core curriculum classes like calc, chemistry, etc. I am really glad I did and would urge anybody that has the opportunity to take full advantage of it. I was able to take enough general credits to be a full semester ahead when I did start college.

Sounds like you can't go wrong. I do some academic recruiting for Purdue here in Georgia and the admissions office has 3 full-time staff here. I'll email the admission officer I work with and ask her if she knows anything about it. I'll let you know if I find out anything.

There are lots of smart kids that can do the work but some have trouble with the boarding school aspect.

I assume this means giving up sports and many other extra-curriculars, and having a pretty different social experience than most of us had in HS. If he really understands that, and is willing to make the choice, then great.

People with this level of intellect are on a different plane than the rest of us. They'll work a math problem for hours that most wouldn't recognize as a math problem. They'll write computer code at the expense of sleep or nourishment. These are the type that end up in secret government labs working on secret government chit that the tinfoil hats haven't even heard of yet.

If he has that kind of brain, he should see how far he can take it.

You know the upside - here are the potential downsides to look into and consider (based on what I've heard from participants in another state's program that is similar to what you described).

1. It's a boarding school program unless you live locally. You are sending off your 16 year-old and losing a lot of your influence over him. College professors, many of whom will be leftists and who knows what else, will start having a major influence on him two years earlier than otherwise. You won't be able to provide much supervision to him if he's living 100 miles away. At 16, he's going to be away from home for the next two years under the supervision of people who may not share your values. It's your child - you know better than anyone else how he would respond to that type of environment.

2. His schools peers are not going to be very diverse - they're generally going to be nerds. I'm not saying this disparagingly (I'm an engineer), but he isn't going to have the same social experiences with a wide-range of people as someone who is going to a regular high school. His social development at school will be different than for a normal high school student. Might not hurt him in college, particularly at one of the top-tier engineering schools, but how will it affect him in the real world? Again, it is going to depend on the individual kid.

3. He probably isn't going to have the same high school sports and course options as most high school students do. Even if the special school has sports teams, they probably aren't going to be competitive with the schools they play and probably not very important in the school's overall mission (might be just another extracurricular activity). He probably won't be able to take high school shop/agri/industrial arts classes or home economics (family and consumer sciences) classes if he is interested in those. A lot of students aren't interested in those types of classes anyway, and he may have already taken as many of those classes as he would want to (and he could take them next year before he entered the program if he wanted), but that's just another area in which his high school experience would be different. I personally enjoyed those type courses and learned some real-life skills in them. I think this third point is probably less of an issue than the other two because high school sports aren't the be-all/end-all in life and he could gain the knowledge from shop/agri/home ec classes in other ways. The first two points are the most important IMHO.

As you know, you just have to weigh the pros and the cons. It could be a springboard to help him meet his life goals, but to a large extent, he would be skipping the last two years of high school and going to college (or perhaps more accurately a hybrid high school/college that is much more like college than high school). The cons may be relatively insignificant for your son, but those are some things to consider.

Adding on to RR's comments and based on seeing how our daughter is adjusting to her freshman year of college, I'd say you need to be realistic as to both your son's abilities, and the things he still needs to mature into. If he's one of those super self motivated and focused kids, then it might be an outstanding program for him. If on the flip side he needs the occasional reminder to get his work done and put hobbies, socializing and other distractions on hold until work is done, it could be a bad gig for him.

It's hard enough expecting a kid to be mature and self disciplined when they go off to college at 18, having that level of maturity at 16 is even a bigger stretch. It all depends on the kid. It doesn't matter how smart the kid is, if he's mature enough it'll be pretty easy to stay in his room and waste time on the internet, video games etc.

No matter how much a 16 y/o boy may want to claim his independence, I'd say most of them have alot of maturing to do and need a fair bit of parental guidance.

I live in Denton and my kids have friends that went into the program. It is tough and intense. Needless to say, the kids in the program are extremely bright. The program by all the feed back we have gotten certainly prepares them academically for just about anything along those lines, but they pretty much loose their "high school experience."

Not saying that is a bad thing for some folks, but I have seen the kids that are in the program. They are already intelligent, but they go in with few social skills and graduate losing what little they had in the first place.

Man, what a deal.! If he wants to do it and has the opportunity and can mentally tackle it, what's not to like.?

Gets out of HS with 2 years of college credits...

Wish I would have had an opportunity like that.

When I was teaching university math I saw a lot of freshmen who would have done well with less social skill and more algebra skill.

It goes both ways, you will need to figure out what is best for your kid. Does he NEED additional socialization or additional technical challenges. What is the goal? A happy kid, or a kid who graduates 2 years early? If he can do both, all the better.

If he is happy, well adjusted, and loves math, go for it. If he is unhappy about his social prospects, allow him to stay home and work on that.

It's kind of like an inner-city kid with a chance to go to NBA school. Might miss some real formative experiences, in the quest to go for the Gold!

Sycamore

I don't disagree with that assessment, but I know these kids that are in this particular program. They have been to my house several times. These are not your average college freshmen and women. These kids are borderline geniuses if not already.

They are sorely lacking in social skills to a person. Not to say that is all of them, but I can safely say it was my opinion of the dozen or so that I have personally spent time with.

I'd have to disagree with the notion of loosing out on "HS experience" and socialization skills. I would argue that these kids wouldn't benefit, and their social skills would remain stunted.

Kids that academically perform at this level typically feel isolated, alone, and ostracized. Because they're academically gifted "nerds", their HS peers bully and tease them unmercifully. Generally these kids remain introverted and strive to be invisible and fly under the radar at school.

Put them in an environment with a couple hundred other nerds, they begin to open up and socialize as they all belong, and feel accepted.

Now, obviously the content of their discussions, debates, and humor would likely seem peculiar to most of us.... however, they would indeed be learning and obtaining social skills.

You posed a question if anyone had firsthand experience with this program and I gave you mine. I have been around over a dozen of these kids that were admitted to the program. I have seen them grow (or not) socially as I have seen other friends of my kids that were in the same high schools from the area that did not enter the program.

YMMV.

Another point. My own kids were in the advanced classes in public high school. My son graduated number 19 and my twin girls should graduate number 15 and 16 this year. I think they were the only round eyes that were in the top 25.

We allowed them to make the decision to enter the TAMS or not. All three of them chose not to for some of the reasons I stated before. My son is a top student at Texas A&M, one of my twin girls was accepted to the University of Texas (holidays should be fun), and the other twin will go to the University of North Texas.

Your son may really thrive and I am sure you know him far better than anyone. Again, I gave you first hand experience or as close as anyone else has for this particular program.

On the other side, my best friend graduated from HS with a 4.2 on a 4.0 scale, had college classes in HS. Could have tested out of Calc and Chem his freshman year, but chose not to. Got straight A's through his first two years, ended up graduating with a 3.9 GPA at a good engineering school.

Oh, and he got the highest $$ job offer of all the seniors that year!

Lol, You wrote TAMS and and I read "TAMMS" (http://www.apd.army.mil/pdffiles/p750_8.pdf) I kept trying to figure what high level math and science had to do with running Army shops and such.

Back on track I think Ramblin Razorback made some very good points. I'd encourage the kid to stay in regular high school taking every AP course he could and possibly look into doing some summer classes at local universities/community colleges. Graduate on time with his friends and hit a four yr college a step ahead of the game with AP credits and possibly a class or two from summer session.