My daughter is a 12 year old all star cheerleader in the seventh grade. She is currently taking all advanced classes, including Pre-Algebra. She is also taking theatre and Dance 1. She was selected for Duke TIP and will be taking the ACT in February. My question is how can i prepare her for high school, college, and career? She loves school and would do anything to be more successful.
ETA- I forgot to mention that she wants to be a PICU nurse when she is older.
Read. Make sure she reads a lot. Also, procrastination is the devil.
^ Concur. There are “tricks” to learning how to quickly solve many of the math questions (although it remains to be seen what the “new” SAT is like), but there is nothing like reading for building vocabulary and a sense of what good sentences look like (and when it’s okay to split an infinitive).
You could be describing my kid. Except for Duke TIP. Our territory was NUMATS.
Is she self motivated? If she is, let her be herself.
My advice: Make sure she takes time for fun and play.
Do you have a specific concern?
She reads for pleasure all the time. When she was 2, I caught her at 10pm rocking and picture reading in her rocking chair. When she was 7, she read a 10 chapter book in a day and understood it. Anyways, she reads a lot. She is very self motivated and I do not have any specific concern. She does want to get ahead starting next year, possibly taking high school courses?
Just let her take the lead. Sounds like she can do that. I don’t think there is anything specific you need to do to “prepare” her for HS and college. She’s on the right track, from what you describe. If she wants to go to nursing school for a BSN, she’ll have no problem. But I have to ask: Why not medical school? She seems to have the chops for it.
I am a PCT at a dialysis center and her dad is a nurse at another dialysis center. She loves that the nurses seem to call the shots. She also just loves kids and medicine in general.
"She does want to get ahead starting next year, possibly taking high school courses? " Schools have vastly different policies about this. If this is supported by your school system, it’s a good idea, assuming she wants to do it and can do well. If she can’t take them through your school system, you will have to consider whether it’s worth taking them elsewhere–if you do, make sure it’s an honors level class if that is what she would get at her high school. For example, our school offers things like algebra1 and geometry over the summer, but they aren’t honors classes and aren’t suitable for top students.
Why is she taking the ACT in February? These are college admissions tests. There is no point in stressing out a 7th grader over them. She already has the test score for TIP so what is the purpose? Please, back off a bit, let her be a kid and enjoy middle school–she will spend too much time worrying about these tests in high school–no reason to add years to this stress.
She is taking the ACT to qualify for the TIP program. She was just recommended for it.
Middle school is a great time to try out different activities. Usually the time commitment in high school is higher and it’s often not possible to do more than one major activity at a time. My daughter did a lot of activities in middle school and had to choose when she reached high school.
I cringe when I hear about parents pushing their middle schoolers into test prep schools, but reading a lot in areas of interest and participating in any math club or math team your middle school may have are both good for building general skills that will be helpful for high school coursework and for those admissions tests.
My kid took the ACT in middle school. It is a ‘thing’ for gifted kids, part of NUMATS and TIP.
@iflycuzican Check your local universities, and any that are within easy driving distance, in addition to Duke (and Northwestern, where NUMATS is) and check out the weekend and summer offerings for gifted students.
Thank you @Palomina
I don’t know how you feel about your local high schools, but your family might interested in looking into this program: http://www.educationaladvancement.org/caroline-d-bradley-scholarship/
It was a life-changer for us.
I thought of a couple more things to add to the conversation.
Her math score on the ACT will likely be lower than the other sections because she has not yet taken geometry. Nothing to be concerned about - don’t let that throw you (her) when the scores arrive. It just means she hasn’t taken much ACT math yet.
Do spend a little time comparing your state requirements for graduation against university requirements. For example, some states require two years of foreign language for graduation, while some elite universities want to see three or more years of FL in high school. Look at some university requirements as she is entering high school and creating a four year plan. You’ve got a lot of time to do that.
I thought about that. I’m not really worried about her score this go round but she just needs to try her best.
If her ACT is strong and she is interested, the Davidson THINK program is something to consider. Intense, but one of my kids really wanted to do it, and loved her two summers there with highly gifted kids. At age 20 she still has close friendships with some kids she met there.
Wow I had no idea there were kids in middle school taking the ACT… I wonder at what point we just let our kids be kids and not be so worried about what college they’re going to at age 12…just my opinion. I get it if you’re kid is prodigy smart but I’m guessing that they will end up being at the head of their class the whole way anyway and most schools in the US offer a plethora of AP classes once you get to high school and accelerated classes so the kid is not bored etc. I wonder how the kids do on the ACT at that age if they haven’t learned much of the material yet…
The ACT in middle school is a tool used to identify gifted students. The term the programs use is “talent search”. Duke and Northwestern are two regional programs that offer many classes and camps for students identified as gifted and talented in middle school.
http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/program/numats
“NUMATS identifies academic ability, measures growth and connects students to resources and opportunities for advanced students.”
I’m so glad I was ignorant of all of this. A 12 year old should just read and challenge themselves and have fun. End of discussion for me…there is no need to enter the high stakes game at 12!
OP: i’d have your daughter plan on taking a solid core group of hard classes in high school; and add in a few of her interests. you can talk to your middle school counselor and see what classes she can take next year that will count as high school classes to give her slight advantage in the gpa game if thats important.
duke tip: a kid in my daughter’s band scored in the high 30s and a 36 in one section through duke tip program. Our state flagship gave him a full scholarship in 7th grade; kinda cool for him.
but we didnt have our 7th grade kid take the ACT thru the duke tip. Couldnt see the point; some of his friends were disappointed at their scores and it seems too early to deal with this.