@SwimmingDad haha. When I first typed it, I listed those trips at $6K but since I hadn’t seen an invite lately, I backed off a bit. We used to get the invitations to go to someone’s house for a “get together” and have a host couple sell us on the program. We never attended. Instead, my kids went on Catholic Heart Work Camp mission trips to a bunch of different cities. It cost about $150/kid and the kids raised the rest of the money over the school year to attend. It was bare bones, they had a blast and felt empowered after their week.
@mathmom Universities absolutely have the ability to be charitable. The definition of charity is the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need. That would be financial aid, would it not ?
The CTY may be associated with Johns Hopkins but I doubt you can treat it as being the same with the overall school focus and budget.
One of the more valuable aspects of doing testing through one of the Talent Search programs is the information given to parents along with the scores. Not just where your child is relative to others his/her age/grade but also information you can take to your school to help get appropriate educational extras for your child. It was nice for us to see that son being in his grade, ahead for his age, was appropriate. We were lucky the school district encouraged this testing and also did appropriate GT placement.
The intensive studies summer program is now up to over $4,500 but certainly not $8-$10K. Expensive, but comparable to the summer teen travel camps in our area. Not sure what you are referring to swimdad, but the question here was specifically about CTY.
The initial invitation is based on local standardized test scores, but the talent search requires the student to take the SAT. There are two levels of summer courses now, with the intensive studies akin to the old CTY courses for highly gifted kids and the newer academic explorations more typical of gifted summer programs.
One of mine did it one summer and it was great. He really enjoyed being with other kids who “got” him and who had similar interests. It was a bit expensive for us and he ended up with other opportunities the other summers. My other kids were fine with traditional Y camps and travel adventure camps. One also was more interested in theater in the summer than in studying.
It did not factor into his college applications, but certainly helped a kid that felt very different from many of his classmates find his tribe, at least for a short time.
JHU asks on their application if you were a part of JHU-CTY. How much does it matter? Dunno, probably not much.