<p>Just curious as to how the program, if it exists, works at other schools. I would imagine that many members of CC are considered "Gifted". At my school, the requirement is an IQ of 130, determined by an IQ test that can be taken at any age, and recommendations by teachers. The vast majority of members enter the program in elementary school. I attend an above-average public school, and the number of members varies greatly by class. My class has a total of 16 members in a class of 250, but the class below me has only 4 members in a class of about 330. </p>
<p>How is it run at your school? Are you in it? Other thoughts?</p>
<p>Did you see this on the 2015 thread or did this just come to you. Our school had you take a test in second grade. If you scored 98th percentile (130) you were gifted. They’d never let you know your exact score, just if you passed. The program lasts from 3rd to 8th grade.</p>
<p>We don’t have a gifted program. The gifted and talented program starts in elementary school and ends in the 8th grade. The really, really smart students just take really hard classes and are ~3 years ahead of everyone else lol.</p>
<p>We don’t have one and my IQ has never been tested. I was put in higher-grade-level classrooms for certain subjects in elementary school, and my high school accommodates pretty much whatever I want to do academically, so I’m sufficiently challenged.</p>
<p>We don’t have a gifted program. In elementary school (the only grades they have it), I qualified for gifted, but my school didn’t have it and my parents would’ve had to drive an extra 30 mins to get to a school with on.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t have a gifted program. We have “Governor’s School” where students who excel in math and science can apply. They go to this other high school in the mornings with kids all across the region to take math and science, and then come back to our high school at like 11:30 to do the rest of their classes.</p>
<p>StudiousMaximus, MIThopeful2016, and SerenityJade all know what I’m talking about since they are from VA too.</p>
<p>I’m not in it. I’m too dumb in math. </p>
<p>Personally, I think gifted programs are stupid. No, I am not just saying that out of jealousy. They are, because they are mostly based on certain things that are irrelevant to a person’s real intelligence, IMPO. Intelligence is not “Solve for x” or “What year did Columbus sail the ocean blue”, that is memorization.</p>
<p>An IQ test isn’t “Solve for x”… My gifted program doesn’t have a class. The teacher basically acts as a facilitator for ECs like Model UN, Odyssey of the Mind, etc and as an aid in the college app process senior year.</p>
<p>While I understand your reservations, I fail to see how they are “stupid”.</p>
<p>In a way I think it’s sort of unfair to deny those opportunities to people without the right IQ, though. My school, which doesn’t have an official gifted program, gave me extra academic opportunities because of the intelligence/potential I demonstrated, but I’d estimate my IQ to be around 115-120. Which is presumably not high enough for most gifted programs.</p>
<p>I never said an IQ test was solve for x (that’s why I deleted that part, I realized it sounded like that), but I just meant in general altogether.</p>
<p>“Stupid” might be an overstatement, but I don’t really see how they help anyone. They isolate the kids who are deemed “above average intelligence” and I feel those students probably are prone to more social awkwardness in a way, because they are told they are smarter, they are x, y, and z, and put in a special program away from everyone else for at least a little part of the day. In the real world, after high school, they’ll have to deal with everyone, not just the above average people. </p>
<p>What does it do? AP classes are just as good, as far as I can see. Most of the kids in the Governor’s School Program are also pretentious and stuck up, and while I don’t personally have a problem with this, a lot of kids at school do, because it makes them feel inferior.</p>
<p>^^^^Which Governor School is closest to you? </p>
<p>Also oddly enough, TJ counts as a whole year academic gov school when I last checked.</p>
<p>On topic, I could’ve gone to one. The one in my region started my junior year. Didn’t offer CS, but they begged me to apply and come. I didn’t go.</p>
<p>With regards to IQ, I don’t even know how they used the tests for gifted when I took them in Middle School. When I lived in Hawaii, took some there. Got in Gifted/Talented program, it was BS. </p>
<p>In Memphis, there was CLUE, but it was literally just for English, and I declined the invite. </p>
<p>Some of the smartest people I’ve met have not done any Gifted/Talented program.</p>
<p>I think I’d be good at the science, but the math would kill me. Not fair they get such a huge GPA boost (at least at my school they do). This one kid I know who goes to it has a 4.0 (?) unweighted, and about a 4.8 weighted GPA (all the weight is pretty much coming from Gov School). Ridiculous.</p>
<p>Yeah, TJ is a whole academic one. RVGS is just in the mornings.</p>
<p>My school doesn’t have a gifted program; where I’m from it’s only kindergarten-8th grade. I don’t think we have an IQ test. We have the CogAT (cognitive abilities test) and if you score in the 97th percentile on one of the sections then you’re in the gifted program.</p>
<p>I’d say about 50-60% of my school is in the Gifted program, and I’m one of those people. Most people start in elementary school but a lot (like me) go into it during high school.</p>
<p>Also, in my school, it’s not a joke. The Gifted classes are kind of in between Honors and AP, and move considerably faster through the material than Honors.</p>
<p>Just curious, is Gifted in other people’s schools a step above Honors? In my school, for example, an A in honors is 4.4 but Gifted is 4.44 (and AP is 4.48). Do colleges recognize that Gifted programs are supposedly harder than Honors? Because I never see anyone talking about it on here and not many people have Gifted programs at their schools…Oh one more question, what subjects are considered “Gifted” for yall? At my school, you can only take Gifted math or English.</p>
<p>My school system had it 2nd-8th grade, having two divisions of the program. One for the “gifted” students, and the other for those who qualified as “highly gifted.” The students who qualified for the gifted program would attend an advanced class taught by a single teacher for half the day, and then head back to their regular class. The “highly gifted” kids attended a whole other school altogether.</p>
<p>Honestly though in both of the schools I went to then, it was a total joke – not really more advanced, it was just 10x the work. The only thing that really made it worth it was the amazing teacher who taught the class from 4th/5th grade. She was always amazing supportive and had all sorts of life advice for us that I still hold close to my heart.</p>
<p>We started out with 16 people in our class (we probably had about 150 kids in the grade or so), but by the time we graduated had about 29 or so.</p>
<p>We took forms of standardized testing to get in, and if I remember right they shoved over three tests down our throats to qualify in the second grade. (I think it was something like the Standard Binet, the OLSAT and possibly COGAT) I’ve never really been a big fan of the testing approach. I just don’t see how a stupid graded test booklet can really truly estimate your future accomplishments and such, no matter how heavily researched…(especially when the people developing said booklet, or anyone for that matter, has what they’re testing truly is.)</p>
<p>However, high schools here don’t have the program. Despite having been in it, I’m kind of glad they don’t.</p>
<p>If the majority of students are in the gifted program, that’s called the average, and gifted by definition means much higher than average. Also, your school definitely has some serious grade inflation going on. You better get some insane scores on the sat or colleges are going to realize this and it will be at your disadvantage.</p>
<p>Anyways, most of these programs don’t even make sense because they’re just based on your grades, and all you need to get good grades is to study more than other people, no matter if you’re actually smart or not. Something like an IQ test that actually gauges intelligence would make more sense.</p>
<p>Yeah, all the way through high school. It’s kind of annoying though, all of your classes are with the same people. At least for me. I get easily annoyed by people, so imagine seeing them every day, the entire day.</p>
<p>I was in the “Gifted” program when it started back when I was in the 8th grade. The reasons why I put quotation marks around gifted is because the middle school I attended was one of the worst in the state. And since most of the kids in my middle school wouldn’t do their work, all you had to do was do your work and you were in! I was also taking 5th grade math in the 4th grade, scored on the collegiate level in reading when I was in the 8th grade (most were scoring between the 5-7th grade levels. This one kid scored on a 2nd grade reading level!), and ended up graduating 3rd in the middle school class of '09!</p>
<p>We had a gifted program in elementary and middle school. There’s also a “We think you’re gifted and we’ll test you later” program for K-2 kids. They weren’t all too good…</p>
<p>But then when you get to high school, you get Governor’s Schools like mine. I don’t know my IQ but it was one of the tests they gave us along with the Compass tests required to take college courses in high school.</p>