<p>But the unrealistic expectations do not originate with CTY or the Talent Searches. They originate with the tests, whether they are nationally normed or state tests. If you have a group of 7th graders who all score in the 95% or 97% on a particular test, all the parents will get to feel that their child is gifted. </p>
<p>But if all the students in the group take the SAT, some will score very low, and some will score high. We know a family who thought their child very bright. The kid took the SAT twice and both times did not make the cut off for CTY (but made it for CAA). They were disappointed, but their child ended up having a great time in his CAA program.</p>
<p>Part of the reason why we did not know about CTY earlier is that no one in our community seems to go around bragging about their kids. There is no gifted program except for the programs run by MIT that attract families from all over New England and even from abroad.</p>
<p>I’m with those who think a sneak preview of the SAT when it counts for nothing can’t possibly hurt a kid. Though perhaps the materials that come from CTY should be clearer that you aren’t meant to study for it. We made sure our kids understood what the purpose of the testing was. All they ever did to prepare was the short practice test that came with the materials to make sure they understood the format.</p>
<p>In fact taking the SAT in 7th grade did a world of good to Mathson’s little brother who has always felt very much in the shadow of his big brother. Even though he didn’t score nearly as high as big brother, he did score well enough to qualify for CTY it really turned him around, and made him realize that while he often struggles with schoolwork because of some mild LDs, he’s actually much brighter than he realized. </p>
<p>As for the parents who don’t realize that being asked to take the SAT doesn’t mean squat, well I don’t see that it’s a big problem. If they had read anything about the program they’d know how silly they were.</p>
<p>And although I too miss the norm based tests, they never told you what your child knew. At least standards based tests actually tell you if your child has mastered the curriculum.</p>
<p>The administrators at my son’s middle school wanted him to take Algebra I - they said they were “afraid” his independent study of Alg in the back of his elementary math class might “come back to haunt him when he took the SAT”. I made a deal with them - he would take the SAT and and if he did as well as the kids at the school who had taken algebra, he could move on.</p>
<p>Some of the 7th graders at the school take the test to qualify for the Duke TIP programs. BTW, Duke would not accept my son’s 6th grade scores the following year (said they could only use scores from tests taken in 7th or 8th) even though my son’s scores were in the 99+th percentile of their program recipients??? My son wasn’t interested in Duke’s programs and never bothered to retake the test. </p>
<p>BTW, we told him that “wrong answers” carried a penalty - that comment was the extent of his prep - no sample tests, nothing. He easily scored enough to join SET. We get the once/month magazine and mailings but never wanted to attend any CTY programs. </p>
<p>I think taking the SAT was a worthwhile experience. I’ll have to admit, until I saw his SAT score, I had no idea how different from the other gifted kids my son was. </p>
<p>I agree with Marite - those parents who consistently see 95-99+% on norm referenced tests need something more discerning to better define their child’s abilities.</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 levelon 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>This is not at all surprising, nor is it apple and oranges - the SAT and ERB measure similiar skills, but the ERB is like a weigh scale that cuts off at 100 lbs. The kid who weighs 101 and steps on the scale will read “100” and the kid who weighs 190 will also read 100. You have to take them both over to the bigger scale (the SAT) to get their true weight.</p>
<p>The ERB’s are predictive the other way - if the kid steps on the scale and weighs 60 (60th percentile ERBs) then there’s no point in bringing him over to the bigger scale. </p>
<p>Again, given the rough screening purpose of the age appropriate test, it really doesn’t make a huge difference whether it is nationally normed or not or whether the cutoff is 97% or 95% - the worst that will happen is that you’ll be over inclusive and give the to SAT some kids who don’t really have a high likelihood of doing well on it, which is not the end of the world. You’ll get a lot of “false positives” but very few “false negatives”. If some idiotic suburban parent thinks that even being asked to take the SAT is some kind of major honor, then that’s their problem. I concur with the people who say that CTY is increasingly becoming a business and so it doesn’t hurt them one bit to have zillions of kids take the test and pay their fee on top of the SAT fee (the College Board likes the extra 85k students that CTY sends them too).</p>
<p>Again this is distinct from SET which has remained relatively uncommercialized and has not lowered their standards at all. If anything, we don’t make a big enough deal of those kids - yes they get a nice medal on a ribbon and a magazine subscription but that’s about it - in a world where people had their priorities straight these kids would have the status that we give to top HS athletes, etc. If I were running admissions at a place like MIT I’d be “scouting” those kids now the way that the basketball coaches scout the top freshman basketball players. I get the feeling that in other countries (especially Asia) the kids who do the equivalent are given a lot more status and respect.</p>
<p>Cheers (and Percy): my “ethnic Chinese” is intended to cover pretty much the multitudes produced by the Chinese diaspora, although I will certainly admit to not being able to distinguish Koreans or Japanese reliably. I would consider a Vietnamese or Maylasian who is ethnically Han Chinese “ethnic Chinese”, but not Hmong or Malays.</p>
<p>Percy: Your SET argument depends on kids showing up with their pencils. Maybe things will change in the future, but it’s not generally in the culture in which I live to have your kid show up at the SAT in 7th grade. One of the reasons for that may be that the kids go to good, challenging schools with lots of really smart kids in them. The people I know don’t spend a lot of time fretting about how to get their kids academic enrichment. I’ll add, too, that in their schools academically successful kids do have the status of star athletes, or higher.</p>
<p>As for your crack about the SET group not looking like I would want it to look: That was pretty insulting.</p>
<p>HH: You’re absolutely right about state tests only counting if they were nationally normed. And the “Highly Proficient” designation on the latest NJ tests would surely capture more kids than would be reasonable candidates for most of the CTY programs. I agree that it will set up unrealistic expectations.</p>
<p>JHS- sorry I did not mean that remark to be personal to you. In general, I think that if the kids in that photo fit the general demographic profile of the country better then a lot of the tension that revolves around “holistic” admissions , AA, etc. would disappear overnight. I wish there was some magical way to make it happen. It bothers me personally that there was not one black kid in that photo - I wish that wasn’t true. But it is.</p>
<p>I don’t know what culture you are referring to as far as not having 7th graders show up for the SAT - they get 85,000 kids to show up every year. There are, by my back of the envelope calculation, around 3 million 7th and 8th graders in the 19 NE states, so 85k represents the top 2.5% of them. If they set their screen at the 95th percentile, they seem to be capturing around 1/2 of the potential market, which is not bad. I’d guess that the awareness is higher in areas with “good challenging schools”, not lower.</p>
Consider yourself lucky, JHS. In your district, I bet a SET caliber kid would have been identified & nurtured. (And the kids at the CTY qualifying level are probably well served.) In my town, they wouldn’t know what to do with him.</p>
<p>For CTY, 1/2 of the potential market is very good. For the other half, it’s not so great. And that other half is not evenly distributed along geographical, income or ethnic lines.</p>
But it’s a mistake to accept the ethnic profile of the SET kids without asking questions. For example, what percentage of Asian kids who were invited to take the SAT as 7th graders chose to accept, and what percentage of African-American kids? If there were few African-American kids who were invited in the first place, why is that? It’s a cop-out to just wave your hands and say, “Well, there weren’t any African-American kids in the final group, ergo they’re stupid and don’t deserve to be admitted to the nation’s top universities.” You have to ask why it’s so.</p>
<p>I might also add that the kids who do very well on the SAT in 7th grade won’t necessarily be the ones getting 2400s four years later – I got the same score when I took the ACT in 8th grade through Northwestern’s CTD program as I did when I took it as a junior. :)</p>
<p>Not really analogous, Percy, since those kids who are identified as members of the 99th% on the ERB usually have no other basis of comparison (the differences between the kids on the scale will be visually evident). So, the top ERB scorers can walk around feeling that they are in the top 1% of kids nationwide (as can their parents LOL!), but the truth is, that top 1% <em>is</em> apples and oranges different from the fraction of the 1% of the kids in SET.</p>
<p>Now, some people don’t feel that these differences or slight nuances really matter all that much. But just for the sake of clarity again, these are real differences, and this is why the comparison is not the same. </p>
<p>We’ve had this conversation before on this board, since some people don’t really acknowledge differences between children with IQs of 130 and those of 160, because they are both gifted, after all.</p>
Oh I know that, but as I said in an earlier post, I’m pretty sure he was competing against kids who did study for the SATs. He’d had half a year of algebra, before they revamped the SATs, he did pretty much know all the math - it was all careless mistakes. </p>
<p>Similarly he placed in the top 20 of the NYS Math Counts the year he was in 7th grade. But the top ten were light years ahead of him. Not because they were smarter, but because they’d actually spent serious time learning a lot of things by heart. They answered questions faster than I could even figure out what the questions were. My kid liked math, but he wasn’t interested in doing more than going to a Mathcounts meeting once a week. He had a similar attitude about the SAT. He was fine with taking it (and loved the CTY courses he took), but he wasn’t about to study. That was fine with me. That said I do sometimes wonder if he’d had a bit more ambition what other awards he might have gotten over the years. He’s gotten quite a few, but at minimal effort.</p>
<p>Our school district does an ok, but not great, job of providing enrichment and advanced classes for students with high academic ability. For example, many AP courses are offered, but there is no tracking or acceleration in math until eighth grade and the highest math course offered is Calculus AB for seniors. In any case, the SAT is offered to qualifying 7th graders and many seem to take the test, but almost none of those who take it actually attend CTY (I only know of one other student who attended CTY besides my son, although there may have been others.) My son took the SAT in 7th grade and qualified for CTY. At that age (7th grade, 12 years old), he had no interest in doing academics in the summer. However, he did attend and benefited greatly from CTY when he was entering 10th grade and 11th grade. (he was only 15 in the summer before 11th grade.) If he had not taken the SAT in 7th grade, he would not have been able to attend CTY several years later when he was interested in doing so. Also, FWIW, my son had no exposure to algebra when he took the SAT in 7th grade, and earned a math score high enough to qualify for the math and computer science courses. Students who have had formal instruction in algebra are at a distinct advantage in taking the SAT, and I assume that 7th graders taking it are probably pretty evenly divided between those who have been exposed to algebra and those who have not.</p>
<ol>
<li>In our district students who score high on achievement tests and/or qualify for gifted programs- one is a 132 IQ and another 145 IQ- are told about the SAT testing for talent searches- Rocky Mountain, Duke ,CTD, CTY.</li>
</ol>
<p>Because of the ceiling effects the below level SAT scores can be used as another data point to suggest programming adjustments -compaction, acceleration, enrichment, skipping etc. The students I know who earned over 700 in 6th grade or as high as 800 on the math SAT in 7th also had correspondingly high IQ math and spatial sub tests on the Stanford Benet individual IQ test- 145-165+. </p>
<p>Most researchers will tell you that identification of talent has been a problem in low income/under educated families. The belief is there are a lot of highly intelligent kids we are missing from that part of society—and it is a large part.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>As has been stated creativity is not measured on the SAT. Also it is the visual spatial learner who may not do well in the traditional linear/sequencial classroom (often grades 4-8) but whose genius may show up in projects and in other ways that I think MIT also wants to include in their application evaluations. These kids, who may be the best problem solvers in Physics, may be open to making silly mistakes on tests which is why they often are not the ones who score an 800 on the math but seem to always “miss a few”. They often can see the solution to a complex problem, pick up concepts easily, skip steps, have solutions that are difficult to read and follow, unique approaches, and have handwriting that looks like a second graders. I think the holistic approach can help spot these kids based on other aspects of the application/ECs.</p></li>
<li><p>The issue of social skills came up and somebody wondered if introverts were being short changed. Being an introvert and being social are not mutually exclusive. Many people who are introverts have highly developed social skills. Preferring to work independently does not mean you can not get along nor does it mean you cannot be a part of a team. I think positive social interactions are what they are weighing in the applications. Also it might be a negative to have a class full of anti social, egomaniacs who having perfect AMCs scores is the only thing they have in common. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think when a school like MIT builds a class it is like recruiting for a football team. You want great athletes at each position. What good are just top math kids if they are not interested in the other majors? Would MIT want just Biology majors or any one area? I am sure they look for diversity of thought, and interest, and background. They will try to identify diamonds in the rough but they cannot be wrong too often and as a practical matter most of their admits will have pretty high SAT scores, especially in the math are.</p>
<p>It is funny how people bash the SAT and then seem to want to use it as the perfect measure when somebody with a high score gets rejected and somebody with a lower score gets accepted. Every kid I know who earned a perfect ACT/SAT was pretty impressive, no matter how much practice they did. I would also say that thinking back, as far as potential and genius , some of the best I have seen are not the perfect scorers.</p>