<p>The SET subset is comprised of kids who haven’t “studied” or reviewed anything before taking the SAT…or at least my kid. No practice tests, no fancy review courses, no tutors. Their scores are “pure” aptitude, as opposed to kids who have taken many multi-thousand $$ courses in high school to boost scores.</p>
<p>BTW, same kid took the SAT last Sat, and didn’t open the book for that either. He will also have a “pure” score for that, which is contrary to 99% of his agemates.</p>
<p>And there absolutely is a difference between a “studied” and prepped score, and one achieved naturally, and yep, it certainly does say something about native intelligence.</p>
<p>IMO, CTY has been corrupted, and is now a money-making business.</p>
<p>They accept STATE tests to qualify now for most, if not all, states (last I looked).</p>
<p>These tests are meaningless in determining intelligence.</p>
<p>Our town’s middle school gifted teacher informed parents two years ago she will no longer be screening for referrals to the program; she told them it was up to them to determine if they thought their kid was a good candidate. Of course, all of the parents whose kids scored “advanced” on the state tests will now be rushing to sign up their kids for CTY.</p>
<p>“They are giving the motivated, bright, and promising students (minorities or no) the opportunity to step outside of whatever environment they grew up in.”</p>
<p>If this were true, I would not have a big problem with it, but I don’t think it IS true. When it comes to taking a relaxed view of objective qualifications, most often this applies to (certain) minorities than to the “or no” kids - tell me how many Asian males there are at MIT with below 700M scores? Secondly, the kids who end up benefiting from AA are NOT the ones who are totally clueless about education - if they were, how did they end up applying to MIT in the first place or getting close t0 700 scores? Very often AA admits are the children of upper middle class black professionals from suburban schools (as we have seen from the above articles inner city kids have very little chance of getting the 700 or so that is needed even for “URMs” at MIT) - why does such a kid deserve any boost at all over say a Vietnamese kid whose parents work in a restaurant kitchen? Another growing category of AA admits is first generation African Americans - why does a kid whose parents are immigrants from Somalia more deserving of special consideration than a kid whose parents are from Sri Lanka? The former is a “URM” but the latter isn’t. I’m not really sure that the admission people are wise enough to distinguish the truly disadvantaged but deserving from people who are making up stuff ala Marilee (and it seems to me that putting the emphasis on such sob stories creates a topsy turvy world where the worse the better - if your parents have given you a loving home and encouraged you, you’re at a disadvantage, but if you’ve been abused and abandoned, that’s great) but I know for sure that “disadvantage” and “race/gender” are no longer inextricably linked in America so that the latter is a really lousy proxy for the former, to the extent that race/gender alone (in the absence of other facts) should not be a “plus” factor at all.</p>
<p>HH: CTY used to accept state tests, but the kid had to score in the top 3% and then was administered an aditional test – SAT for 7th & 8th, another test (whose name I can’t remember) for 5th & 6th. There were tiers of eligibility for CTY programs. Above a certain score qualified for residential programs; below that cut-off, kids could do weekend or one day programs at various colleges. Even on-line mentoring was available. Maybe those less stringent one day courses are what your town’s gifted teacher is recommending?</p>
<p>I think some of the SET surveys have addressed that issue. I don’t think that conclusion is general–it is certainly not a rule of program eligibility.</p>
<p>I seem to remember (my son was in 7th grade 4 years ago now) that when the program was brought to my attention they recognized nationally normed tests only. They have since added state tests.</p>
<p>Just went to the site and noticed they dropped eligibility from 97% to 95% on normed tests too.</p>
<p>It has a very different feel than it used to when I first looked at it. Yes, your kid can do a program of one sort or another if they score in the 400’s–isn’t that kind of a joke? </p>
<p>My son took the SAT in 7th because he was curious, but he had no interest in spending his summer at one of their programs, which, I guess, sounded kind of lame to him.</p>
<p>True, TA. I was talking only about my kid (and a few others we know who are in the program, who also neither studied for the 7th grade SAT, nor their college boards). SET certainly has no honor code requiring that kids take the test without any prep.</p>
<p>Hereshoping, When my S was in 7th grade, we enquired about the possibility of using state tests as my S had not taken a nationally normed test since 3rd grade. It was okayed, and he went on to take the SAT. Is this what you are referring to, or are state tests accepted in lieu of the SAT and ACT?</p>
<p>I think CAA has been around for a while, and eligibily cutoff for its programs is set lower than for CTY programs. I recall seeing acceptable SAT scores in the mid 400s.</p>
<p>“Percy: Is it society pushing the race/class/gender consciousness of admissions at elite colleges such as MIT, or is it the market? That is, the customer?”</p>
<p>I think it’s the faculties, which lean to the left much more than the students - I don’t know that top students are crying out for “diversity” admits based on standards lower than those that apply to themselves (except to the extent that they perceive it as helping them out on the grade curve). </p>
<p>Even if this was “customer” driven I don’t think it should be tolerated. At one time (again read the Karabel book - I can’t recommend it highly enough for lifting the scales from your eyes) the “market” demanded that not too many Jews attend top colleges, and the administrations went along with this. Now that is considered a shameful chapter in our history. In the South, restauranteurs often used to say that they had no personal objection to serving blacks, but that their customers would never tolerate it. I think we will someday in the not too distant future get to the point (O’connor put a 25 year cap on it in her Michigan decision) where it will be illegal to give special consideration to the race or gender of college applicants, regardless of what the “customer preference” is.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Percy isn’t so wrong about the Weiss’ experience with Belmont Middle School, at least insofar as I remember (Diane Weiss was an acquaintance back then). But it should be pointed out that Belmont was a desperately poor, desperately underperforming school, and that kids with any sort of demonstrated talent or parental support were already somewhere else by sixth grade. The project certainly taught people that money wasn’t the most important barrier to completing school and going to college – but then who thought it was?</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t think there’s any magical Asian culture. I know that in general, in the Philadelphia School District, Asians and whites test about the same (Asians a little higher in math, whites in reading). Roughly 45% of each group, across all age levels, underperforms grade level. Blacks and Hispanics test much lower, with about 75% underperforming grade level. When the data are cut by income, low-income kids look almost exactly like Black and Hispanic kids. There are plenty of white and Asian kids in the low income group. I think that wealth and parental educational background are pretty good predictors of testing outcome (although there are more than enough high-performing underprivileged kids to keep MIT’s admissions committee interested).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Here’s another anecdote: At my son’s large public magnet, which is about 25% Asian, and probably 20% ethnic Chinese, there are no ethnic Chinese kids in the top 2-3% of the class this year. (That’s unusual, of course – in my daughter’s class they were proportionally represented.) There are several ethnic South Asians, and one Japanese immigrant. This is the pool of kids there who go to Ivy League schools, and MIT, etc. And at the private school he used to attend, only one of the top students this year is Asian (also not ethnic Chinese, by the way).</p>
<p>So, when I see a picture of kids that look overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese, and you tell me that it is demographically representative of students with high intelligence across income levels . . . I just don’t buy it.</p>
<p>(The best actor in his class, though, IS Chinese, with parents who speak little or no English. She’s going to a high-prestige drama conservatory next year.)</p>
<p>I mean state tests to qualify for taking the SAT through CTY.</p>
<p>Maybe your state tests are excellent, but in our state they are pretty much meaningless. (And in your case, it was obvious that your son was a candidate for the program.) There is no way that an “advanced” score can tease out a gifted kid from an above average kid, which is why, I think, our gifted teacher is kind of disgusted with the program.</p>
<p>In other words, there are many parents in our community who now believe that little Johnny/Susie are geniuses because they qualified for the SAt through CTY.</p>
<p>97% on a nationally normed test, on the other hand, was meaningful.</p>
<p>CTY had not way of knowing that my kid was a good candidate for the program; we had no idea ourselves whether he would qualify. But, it would have been ridiculous to trot out the nationally normed test he took in 3rd grade to qualify for taking the SAT–hence our query.</p>
<p>I know that many state tests are not very rigorous. But, in response to the expansion of state tests, many school districts have stopped administering some nationally normed tests. So CTY is responding to this reality, that there may no longer be nationally normed tests available to act as a screening device. I have no problem with this so long as the SAT/ACT scores remain the criteria for eligibility for CTY programs. </p>
<p>While our school district does not encourage taking the SAT in 7th grade, I think this might not be a bad thing. It would identify high achieving middle-schoolers of all backgrounds and encourage them to aspire to enrichment programs of various kinds. As it is, information about enrichment programs still gets relayed by word of mouth, and this advantages middle class families far more than low-income or remotely situated families.</p>
That’s the theory, but I would be willing to be that some portion of those SET kids did indeed study for the SAT. It’s still a pretty darned impressive accomplishment at age 13. I was interested in particular when looking over the verbal responses. There were lots where I thought the answer was obvious, but he didn’t. </p>
<p>Hereshopping the kids aren’t genius’s because they qualified to take the SAT, they are geniuses if they do better than the majority of high school seniors once they take the SAT. (Actually they probably aren’t geniuses, but they probably are in the top 3% of their age group.) Lots of the kids who are invited to take the SAT for CTY don’t score very high. The whole point of CTY is to tease out which kids are pretty bright, vs. which kids might be ready for some serious acceleration based on SAT scores at an early age. It still works that way. It doesn’t matter if too many kids are taking the SATs - they still only accept kids into the program who score above the average senior.</p>
<p>JHS - “So, when I see a picture of kids that look overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese, and you tell me that it is demographically representative of students with high intelligence across income levels . . . I just don’t buy it.”</p>
<p>First of all I have to say you have a better ability to analyze fine points of race than I do. In that photo I saw a lot of east Asian kids (though I’m not sure an “overwhelming” # - there were also lots of white kids, south Asian (aka Indian) kids, etc). But, I could not begin to tell you which of the east Asians were Chinese vs. Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.</p>
<p>In the 1980-1992 period (the period for which I’ve seen the data) around 32% were Asian (vs. <5% of the general population). I suspect that # is much higher now. 66% where white and 1.3% were black or hispanic. This also conforms to what you’d see on other similar measures - e.g. the kids who score 2400s in HS, top qualifiers in math competitions, etc.</p>
<p>Again, I think the beauty of SET is that it is a purely merit based competition that is open to all comers on a level playing field. All you have to do is show up with your #2 pencil. The photo doesn’t lie - this is who qualified. It may not be who you would have WANTED to qualify but they are who they are. Who are you going to believe - your own prejudices or your lying eyes?</p>
<p>Yes, I get it, mathmom; thanks–I’ve been through the process with my kid.</p>
<p>It can be a good thing that there is a wider net cast to catch talent. </p>
<p>But it can also be a bad thing in giving parents unrealistic expectations about their kids. I’m talking about the parents’ perception, which can often be skewed when it comes to their own kids in a suburb like mine. I know of kids who studied for the 7-8th grade SATs. Is this a good thing?</p>
<p>A score of “Advanced” on our state test can include kids with IQs probably starting in the 112 range. Is it a good idea that kids with IQs ranging from 112 and up take the SAT in 7th grade? Perhaps you think so.</p>
<p>“A score of “Advanced” on our state test can include kids with IQs probably starting in the 112 range. Is it a good idea that kids with IQs ranging from 112 and up to take the SAT in 7th grade? Perhaps you think so.”</p>
<p>I don’t see the harm in it - at worst the kid has spent a Saturday morning reading and doing math problems instead of playing on his Playstation and watching cartoons - where’s the harm in that? Maybe they will find more of those unidentified geniuses people here keep claiming that CTY is missing.</p>
<p>Seriously, the reason they do this is that once you have ceilinged on a grade level test you can’t get any more information out of it - as you say, “Advanced” on a state grade level test might mean you are a 112 IQ or it might mean you are a 180 - they are all “advanced”. But then you give them the “above grade level” SAT and you separate the wheat from the chaff. Out of the 85,000 that take the test 2/3 are below 500 (and have in effect wasted their time) but you can’t know in advance who those 2/3’s are. </p>
<p>Again the idea is to pre-identify the likely gifted group without being too 0ver or under inclusive and without requiring people to take a test (that they haven’t already taken anyway) in order to take a test. How else would you do this?</p>
<p>If you call the CTY people and beg to take the SAT even without a grade level test, they’ll let you do that too - hell, they’ll take your money if you insist.</p>
<p>-Which is why I decided to send my son to a school that still administers them. If he’s going to sit for a test each year, it might as well be one that provides some meaningful information. Better yet, the school has no need or incentive to teach to this test.</p>
<p>Interesting thing though, HH. I have seen kids get 98th and 99th% on the ERBs, for example (norm referenced) who do not score at a high level on the 7th grade SAT. So, in some ways, they are apple and orange comparisons, because the ERBs do not necessarily predict which are potential SET students. </p>
<p>OTOH, I think CTY has turned into a for-profit, money-making operation as well.</p>