<p>Marite, when the program was started decades ago, it was trying to see if kids with no exposure to algebra could do the math simply armed with natural aptitude. The message has caught on: Some kids need more challenge & are getting it in their home school districts at an early age. Whether or not that substantially changes the type of kid who is eligible for the talent programs, I have no idea.</p>
<p>Talent searches are no different than AIME, All-state Choirs, AP offerings, and any number of enrichment opportunities & competitions in that not all schools offer them (or even are aware of them,) so some kids are out of luck. That holds for all socio-economic levels, urban, rural, big, small, or in between.</p>
<p>Based upon the newsletters from SET, it seems as though many of the olympiad team members are SET members. Since the AIME is an interim step for the selection of IMO teams I would guess there are quite a few who take the test.</p>
<p>But, this is a very different matter. The SAT is much more an indication of “natural ability” although I acknowledge that there may be some kids who “prep”. It is a rare student who sits for the AIME without advanced study in math and rigorous prep for the test or the type of questions offered on the test. </p>
<p>Many SET members do not pursue math. And, many of those who love math are not enamored with “competition math” - which, I once heard a math professor describe as the “equivalent of debate for math”. He went on to say, that “In both arenas (math competitions and debate), winners are rewarded more for knowing the “tricks of the trade” than for their true theoretical understanding of the subject matter.”</p>
<p>My son was very involved in math team and Mathcounts, through middle school. His interest in math team has waned in high school, as other areas of interest have taken precedent. I suspect there are many other kids like him, with true natural proclivity, who are pursuing other things.</p>
<p>SET, incidentally, keeps track of those high 7th grade SAT scorers, even if the CB doesn’t.</p>
<p>A few points about the percentile equivalents of particular scores on various tests:</p>
<p>A 99th percentile on the ERB or ISEE does not mean that one is in the top 1% of the age group population (as a previous poster stated). These tests are normed against independent school applicants, and so a 99th percentile implies that the student is in some fraction of 1% of the population.</p>
<p>Qualifying SAT scores (7th or 8th grade) for CTY are set to correspond to the top 0.5% of the population. Qualifying scores for CAA correspond to the top 2% of the population. </p>
<p>I don’t know the corresponding percentile for the SET qualifying score, but it is clear that SET students are in a different category. My son more than qualified for CTY, but did not qualify for SET. He did absolutely no preparation for the SAT; he did have some algebra, because he has been accelerated in school, but certainly did not have Algebra II at that time. His score was close enough that it is possible that he might have been able to just hit 700 if he did prepare, and the statistical dice rolled his way. But he would have been barely qualifying. My sense is that he does not belong in this group. It is certainly possible that some of the SET group are kids like my son, who managed to qualify because they took some inappropriate (in my view) actions, but most of the group are simply brilliant.</p>
<p>The only reason that all of this is important is that while CAA-qualifying kids will probably have some intellectual peers at their schools, few CTY kids will, and almost no SET kids will. The academic needs of these kids are, in most cases, not being met. CTY may or may be a money-making operation, but their summer program has provided an invaluable experience for my son. If he had an appropriate educational setting, he would not be doing CTY during the summers. I would much rather that he spent his summers pursuing non-academic interests.</p>
<p>“Science also means that when you don’t have data you keep quiet. Science does not involve using the absence of data to intone ominous hints about looking under dangerous rocks, as though knowing in advance (before having the data) what the results would look like.”</p>
<p>So you’re saying that there’s no data at all now that supports a genetic explanation for at least part of IQ differences? I assume you support further research in this area because you are really anxious to learn the truth either way? Or maybe it’s better not to do certain kinds of research 'cause then you’d have no choice but to reify essentialist notions that are best left un-reified?</p>
<p>As for the hoisting the flag comment, I guess there are certain things that you are not allowed to mention in polite society. It’s like the elephant in the room - it’s sitting there but everyone is supposed to pretend that they don’t see it.</p>
<p>Genetics is just one possible explanation. Personally, if I had to bet, I’d bet on culture as an important factor as well. But I get the feeling that there are some explanations people just don’t want to hear raised even as areas to be investigated. As I said before, I don’t think we even need to know the answer (and I don’t think we’re going to find out any time soon because most scientists are bright enough to know not to pick up that hot potato if they value their careers) - all we need to do is treat everyone equally without regard to race or gender. That doesn’t seem to be too much to ask.</p>
<p>I agree that was the intention. The problem is one of defining “prepping.” One can be “prepped” by sheer exposure to algebra or reading without ever having encountered a SAT prep program. My S, without knowing it, had begun doing algebra problems in 3rd grade because he loved logic puzzles. But he’d not seen a SAT test. I suspect that may be the case of many students who take the SAT in 7th grade. They’re like Mr. Jourdain in Moli</p>
<p>We found out the hard way that familiarity with the test format is important. Before the first time my son took the SAT (age 12), I had him do a few practice sections from the pamphlet that CTY sent. I was worried that he would not remember to fill in the dots, or that he would fill in dots for the wrong problem. He did fine. He signed up to take the SAT again at 13, because he wanted to improve his class assignment priority for CTY’s summer programs. I did not think it necessary to do any preparation at all, since he’d taken it before. When he came out after the test, he told me that he’d done the problems for the first math section, but forgot to fill in the answer sheet. He realized what he’d done when time was called for that section. So I canceled his scores. Now he’s going to take it again next month. He did not get into his first choice class for this summer because his scores were not high enough. I hope his scores improve significantly since the first time, or he will have wasted another Saturday morning. I think they should improve, because he’s learned a lot of math in the last 18 months and has now had most of Algebra II.</p>
<p>I agree with Marite. My kids never did any prep whatsoever for the SATs in seventh and eighth grades. But I venture to say that they had been “prepping” their entire lives up until that point in their learning environment. They were accelerated in math and they were advanced in reading and writing and did a lot of it. While this is not directly prepping for a test, the sum of their learning activities surely had to affect their doing well on the SATs in middle school. </p>
<p>I also agree with NYMomof2, that there are very few kids who would qualify for CTY at our school (though many do not even know about it or the SATs) and the learning needs of the students who DO qualify for CTY with high SAT scores are not always met at the schools. We have no special gifted programs here. While my kids never opted to do CTY in summers, I think CTY provides some good information as to how to plan for someone’s learning path and accomodations within schools for those who score well on the SATs and have “gifted” learning needs. I used their suggestions in advocating for such accomodations at school. </p>
<p>To those who keep maintaining the unfairness of admitting various races into the class at MIT as if those students didn’t qualify for admission, I find it really off putting. I believe that every student accepted to MIT is worthy of admission, including academically worthy. MIT doesn’t just pluck an URM student off the app pile and admit them for their race. Candidates must be qualified for admission to the college, including academically qualified to do the work. There are a lot of people who meet that criteria. Because there are so many, they then do try to create a balanced class. That is part of their mission and I am glad of this. It is entirely fair. Admission is not about just skimming off the highest scores off the pile. It is about admitting academically talented students who also have other attractive attributes and also about a balanced student body which enhances the education for all in that learning community. They are a private institution and can use whatever criteria they wish to create such a learning community. But I am positive that all who are admitted are academically qualified and MIT also has a high graduation rate. There is nothing unfair about the process. This is the process at all elite schools. Huge numbers of qualified students are rejected each year. Once the pile of apps is cut down to those who have the academic talent to be admitted, the pile is then cut further by other attributes that contribute to being a successful student at an elite college. The pile is cut further by looking to balance the incoming class to include all types of students (and I am not just talking of race). It is not about just taking the highest SATs, IQs, etc. All who are admitted already have met the criteria academically. Then, there are other factors that come into play to evaluate who they would like to have attend the university. This is entirely fair. If someone gets in who had a lower SAT or GPA than another kid, so be it. That kid had more to offer the university because a person is more than the sum of their test scores. I interview candidates for a very selective college and what makes one candidate attractive over another is not their test score. Yes, they must have test scores in the ballpark for the college. Once they do, so much else factors into who is an excellent candidate and who is not. Even THEN, there are still too many who meet all that criteria and so it can be the luck of the draw if you fill a slot in the class when they balance out the needs of the grouping. But everyone who gets that far in the process has already met the academic criteria for admission.</p>
<p>PS, now that I see NYMomof2’s post, I agree that it is a good idea to do the practice booklet that comes when you sign up for the test to become familiar with the format itself. That is not studying for the test but just knowing what to expect so as to not waste time on test day figuring out the test format.</p>
<p>For that matter, there’s very little systematic difference between human populations as far as genetics goes – we’re an extremely homogeneous species, and races are not terribly genetically distinct. Humans tend to peg race to skin tone; actual genomic variation doesn’t follow skin tone lines. The [url=<a href=“http://hapmap.org/whatishapmap.html]HapMap[/url”>http://hapmap.org/whatishapmap.html]HapMap[/url</a>] project has shown that there are about 15 or 16 different haplotype blocks for any given region of human DNA, and most or all of those blocks are shared among all human populations.</p>
<p>Furthermore, just because something is heritable doesn’t mean it’s immutable. There are plenty of heritable human diseases that can be fixed right up with modern medicine. There’s no reason to think differences in intelligence, if highly heritable, couldn’t be similarly altered.</p>
<p>We read an article in this class (first page can be accessed [url=<a href=“http://beck2.med.harvard.edu/week3/Turkheimer%20page1.doc]here[/url”>http://beck2.med.harvard.edu/week3/Turkheimer%20page1.doc]here[/url</a>]; it’s a Word file, unfortunately) which discussed the differences in heritability among people of different socioeconomic status – among wealthy people, intelligence seems to be quite heritable, while among low-SES groups, intelligence shows very little heritability. That is to say, in impoverished groups, environment swamps any effect genes might have.</p>
<p>So, yes, scientists are interested in researching this issue. They’re just not presenting it in a Herrnstein-and-Murray-esque “Asians > whites > blacks and that’s the way it is” fashion.</p>
<p>Do you have data on this? At our school, students who write the AIME do no test prep at all for it; they are just top math students who scored high on the AMC. Frankly, I’ve not heard of formal test prep for the AIME in the Midwest outside of a few math and science academies. Is institutionalized test prep for the AIME widespread on the East coast?</p>
<p>6According to the teachers and professors who are very involved with the various math competitons - there was a time when the kids involved in this activity were “merely” bright, good math students who enjoyed solving interesting math problems. Now and entire industry has evolved to support such. Some private schools actually offer courses in preparation for such exams. For those whose schools do not offer such, there is a proliferation of math camps, problem solving books, and an on-line groups. Tokenadult often posts about these groups.</p>
<p>The head of the state math team said you only have to look at the evolution of the tests and read the student solutions to see the impact of these programs. Those kids who haven’t spent a great deal of time studying these problem solving techniques/shortcuts, etc. just can’t compete at the higher levels. What he’s more concerned about is the fact that many students are learning the “tricks” without the theoretical understanding of the math behind them. </p>
<p>So, in this case, “prep” takes the form of “coached math team practices”, on-line problem solving courses and groups, math camps, etc. and it is prolific.</p>
This is simplifying things a bit. While indeed most of the genome is shared among people, there is plenty of variation (otherwise there would not be a Hap Map), and population groups from different geographic origins can be readily distinguished. Those haplotype blocks are not randomly distributed, and whether their particular combination confers some specific trait is of great interest, but only approachable to the extent that the trait can be unambiguously defined and has a significant herittable contribution. That said, this does not make a damn bit of difference to this discussion, as it refers to populations, not individuals. Any selected individual can easily be farther out on the bell curve (for any trait) than one from a different population, and therefore entirely deserving of what that trait is rewarded for. E.g., Larry Bird is a white boy who could jump.</p>
<p>The Beck article seemed sensible enough although he was right from the start maybe a little too keenly aware of the political dimensions of the subject - I don’t think you can do good science if you have one eye on the political implications of your results. His conclusions were good - if these differences are due to heredity, then we can try to devise treatment methods. He gives the example of treating nearsightedness, a inheritable condition, with eyeglasses. But the problem is that at this point no one seems to have the foggiest idea of what treatments would consist of and it’s unlikely to be as simple as a pair of glass lenses. What if it turned out that there was some kind of “smart pill” - what would prevent parents of already intelligent children from giving this pill to their children, thus maintaining the gap? What if if this is something like breast cancer, where the genetic cause is known but the cure is far off in the future? It’s nice to take an “assume a can opener”/ science fiction approach to solving problems on paper but in the real world you can’t do that.</p>
<p>We also are 99% similar in our DNA to Chimpanzees, but that doesn’t mean we have the same intelligence as chimps. I’m not buying the idea that humans are a totally homogeneous species except for skin color or that race is a political construct only. There seem to be racial differences in other physical traits such as running ability (and if you break it down further, even among racial sub-groups - east Africans as long distance runners, west Africans as sprinters). Also in prevalence of certain diseases, responses to certain drugs, etc. Pretending there is no such thing as racial differences or even race itself does no one any favor because you end up doing things like giving the wrong dose or wrong medication or looking for the wrong disease unless you take racial differences into account.</p>
<p>I couldn’t see much of the Turkheimer article but the study didn’t seem to be structured in a way that you could draw meaningful inferences - they should have read Beck’s article before drawing up their study design. If a trait is 60% “heritable” in rich people and 0% “heritable” in poor people, then you really haven’t isolated the genetic factor at all.</p>
<p>As for the “that’s the way it is”, well , that IS the way it is -as it stands now, the American black population has a mean IQ that is 1 SD below the white population and Asians are slightly higher, especially on non-verbal IQ. That much is not in dispute I think - these #'s hold up no matter what tests are given. Maybe it will not always be so and that difference will someday, somehow be erased but for now, that’s the way it is. Again you can disagree as to what are the causes of this difference and how to address it (e.g. put your thumb on the scale in the college admissions process, or not) but the existence of the difference itself today is not in dispute except by people who want to take the ostrich approach.</p>
<p>For example, Terence Tao, the recent Fields medalist, is certainly a conspicuous example of early manifested and continually developed talent/ability/performance in mathematics, but it’s simply a biographical fact that his mother had far, far more background in mathematics–being a math teacher–than the mothers of most precocious boys. </p>
<p>For lack of an observer who stayed with their family 24/7 while Tao was growing up, it’s quite hard to say how much of his acknowledged achievement is the result of an unusual shuffle of genes and how much is the result of an unusual home life. The same would apply to any other SET member family in which there was not an observer present in the home frequently while the child was growing up–and that is the case for all SET families.</p>
<p>“That said, this does not make a damn bit of difference to this discussion, as it refers to populations, not individuals. Any selected individual can easily be farther out on the bell curve (for any trait) than one from a different population, and therefore entirely deserving of what that trait is rewarded for. E.g., Larry Bird is a white boy who could jump.”</p>
<p>Of course it makes a difference - the bell curve gets awfully skinny once you go way far out on it. Say the population of black people as a whole has a mean “Jumping Index” of 550 and Asian people as a group have a mean Jumping Index of 400, and that the jumping index is constructed so that 100 pts is = 1 SD and that 500 is the average for the population as a whole. Say that you need a Jumping Index of 750 to play basketball at the level required to compete in the NBA. For black people, 750 is only 2 SD’s away from their population mean, where the bell curve still has a little height to it, so even though blacks constitute only 10% or so of the US population, they represent a far greater % of NBA players. But for an Asian, 750 is 3.5 SD’s from the mean, where the bell curve is just barely above the zero line, so you might end up with only 1 or 2 Asians in the entire NBA.</p>
<p>Now, change “Jumping Index” to SAT score (or IQ or any other g loaded measure) and you have the situation that exists today. There are only 250 blacks in any year that achieve an SAT-M of 750 or above, exactly as many as you would predict given that the mean black SAT is 1 SD below the national average. There are a lot more Asians out at the tail because their population mean is higher. If you go even further out on the curve (say by giving the SAT to 12 year olds), say 6 SD’s out (they estimate that the average IQ of a SET qualifier is around 180) you could be in a situation where there are literally zero blacks (see the photo of the Grand Award winners) and a sea of Asian faces.</p>
Absolutely there are outliers in every trait. But with current admissions policies, the individual who is “entirely deserving” will often have his or her worth questioned.</p>
<p>
A huge problem. After the Bell Curve authors were vilified, scientists are walking on eggshells. Taboo is an interesting book exploring the dominance of black athletes, especially the sprinting speed of those descended from west Africa. (The 40 fastest men in the world at one point --and maybe this still holds true – were ALL of W.A. descent. That is a remarkable fact that can’t be explained without accepting genetic racial differences,) Disease patterns differ greatly among races, in cases that can’t be explained merely by culture — Race is clearly more than a political construct</p>
<p>People seem to be hung up on the idea that it’s somehow unfair or unsporting or something to prepare for the SAT or the AIME, etc. and that you should go in “cold”. I don’t see why that is - in real life, achievement is a combination of innate ability and practice - you need both. If you are an Olympic speed skater, you have to have a lot of natural ability but you also need to spend a huge amount of time on the ice. We would be amazed and pleased if someone who had never skated in his life before appeared at an Olympic trial and was able to skate fast enough to make the team, but we don’t expect this to happen. If anything, we generally think even more highly of athletes (such as the 5’ 11" Alan Iverson) who aren’t born with natural advantages for their sport but who succeed anyway by virtue of lots of hard work and sheer determination to succeed. I wonder whether some of this resentment is really anti-Asian bias in disguise - the same thing went on in the last century with Jews when they started doing well on the college placement tests - they were accused of competing unfairly since they spent so much of their time indoors with their big noses buried in books instead of competing in healthy outdoor athletic activities the way real Americans did. Asians (to make an overbroad generalization) are big believers in the value of hard work as a means of compensating for lack of ability - if you’re not doing well, it means you’re not working hard enough, go do another 100 math problems. After school cram schools are extremely common in many Asian cultures. While we might dispute the wisdom of doing this to our kids, it’s hard to argue with the results.</p>
<p>Token, I have no doubt that SET’s data gathering procedures can’t clearly seperate talent from environmental influences when determining what makes some kids brilliant. If you raised the kid in a Skinner box, maybe you could be sure no prepping went on. I’m sure some does, whether it is formal, or the informal kind that Marite speaks of with her son. When D took the tests, some families DID buy prep books. I don’t know precisely why they did. I wasn’t that interested in their motives. D’s friend, who was not formally prepped, but was virtually raised in the library, scored one of the top ten verbal scores in the country that year. Neither she nor D attended any programs. Our purpose in taking part was to show the administration that more enrichment was needed in the school system.</p>
<p>“As for the hoisting the flag comment, I guess there are certain things that you are not allowed to mention in polite society. It’s like the elephant in the room - it’s sitting there but everyone is supposed to pretend that they don’t see it.”</p>
<p>Oh please, spare us the outrage. The “elephant in the room” has been (and continues to be) pointed at, talked about, poked and prodded, and even restrained for “medical tests” through out the history of this country. And nobody in the world has been more enthusiastic about slicing into that behemoth than American “scientists”—indeed De Furor himself marveled at the advances in their findings, was highly motivated by them, in fact. Only problem is, the agendas of the “researchers” most keen to study the creature are often only tangentially scientific. It is that fact, that history that people in “polite society” find distasteful. It isn’t coincidental that persons such as yourself, persons who are most offended by the presence of minorities with mere 700 SATs darkening the halls of MIT, are the ones most inclined to sputter with outrage while their trembling index finger points out the beast.</p>
<p>Percy, I think you have to seperate SAT prep for the necessary college admissions scores from SAT prep done in the hope of qualifying a kid for early talent search programs. </p>
<p>I do think the American ideal is a vigorous athlete who effortlessly aces all his coursework and is highly social & popular. So the Asian cram schools of today and the one-dimensional Jewish student of yesterday are/were frowned upon. All three are stereotypes, with varying degrees of validity when applied to any individual.</p>