richland program vs. TAMS??? (credit, transfer to, high school)

[i.fly]

Has anyone done either program? What is your input/review? Which is better? Do your credits transfer? Thanks!

[Big G]

I know families whose kids have done each of those programs. They are really two different beasts.

TAMS is residential, Richland's program is not. That's a huge difference both in cost and in time/life commitment.

Admission to TAMS is highly competitive and requires extremely high SAT/ACT scores. It seems to me that Richland will let in any reasonably smart kid.

TAMS attracts mostly people aiming for MIT and the Ivies, with just some aiming for UT. Richland largely attracts people looking to knock out a bunch of lower-level credits to transfer to UT, TAMU, or UTD.

Socially, they are quite a bit different as well. TAMS runs a pretty tight ship, Richland doesn't care what you do outside of class hours. TAMS establishes a new social structure of its own, apart from your old friends AND apart from the rest of UNT. At Richland, you're more on your own. You can hang with your old HS buddies, or try to form new connections at Richland.

One thing that they DO have is common is the transferability of the credits. Both programs transfer fully throughout the UT and TAMU systems, and most classes transfer to OU and OSU as well. MIT and the like will give little to no credit for ANYTHING done in high school, including these programs.

The Richland setup depends on the student completing the DCCCD core curriculum. If they do that, they get a "Get Out of Jail Free" card that allows them to ignore the core curriculum requirements of any of the Texas public universities. In short, they're riding the coattails of the articulation agreements negotiated between the various university groups (UT System, TAMU System, Texas State system, etc.) and DCCCD. The specific technical classes - Physics, Calc, Chemistry - are also already pre-aligned and pre-negotiated for guaranteed transfer. Now, if you take some wacky class like Advanced Glass-Blowing, you're on your own.