Mine was great. It had a normal amount of homework, a smaller class size (which was a happy but unintentional accident), and accelerated four years into three. We shared electives with the rest of the school and socialised widely. I was bullied pretty badly through my pre-teen childhood and the program provided a way out of that, which in turn taught me how to interact with a group of people who didn't physically and emotionally abuse me for social gain - something a lot of people take for granted.

Which is to say that anecdotes are of course going to be mixed.