On Friday, March 25, 2016 at 8:40:34 AM UTC-4, N97MT wrote:
Update:

AOPA has sent a letter to FAA requesting a change to allow the Student Pilot application request to be accepted up to 30 days before a student's 16th birthday:

http://www.aopa.org/-/media/Files/AO...PAR-letter.pdf

AOPA says a workaround for 15 year old Airplane pilots would be to apply for the Student Pilot certificate be checking the Glider category on the application form. The Student Pilot certificate is issued without any aircraft category.

Of course, this workaround will not work for Glider Student Pilots ready to solo on their 14th birthday.

This was discussed in the FAAST Glider Instructor Forum this past Tuesday, and the FAA is aware of the impact to the glider community, and is looking at a way to mitigate this, as they realized that it is impacting the most dedicated aviation community members (FBO and Airport owner families and kids that grew up waiting for their 14th birthday to solo). It should be a non-issue for powered students, but is impacting glider and balloon solos.