<p>My daughter, who is currently a high school freshman, is interested in taking CTY's either "Neuroscience" or "Fast-Paced High School Physics" this summer. She heard that in terms of faculty, the Lancaster is the best center in the North East. Unfortunately enough, the "Neuroscience" course, which is her first preference, is offered not at Lancaster, but at Baltimore and Carlisle. If anybody has experience with CTY's "Neuroscience" course at either Baltimore or Carlisle, then we would like to hear from them please. We would like to hear about your experiences regarding either of these 2 courses--"Neuroscience" or "Fast-Paced High School Physics." Also, I have heard good things about the course "Crafting the Essay", which is available both online and on campus. Please offer me your views regarding this course too. Thank you very much in advance and I wish all of you a very happy New Year!</p>
<p>DD did cty many years and loved it. Wrote her common app essay about it. She did not take neurosci, but I can tell you that she spent one summer at lancaster (took genetics) and the rest at Carlisle (took various humanities). </p>
<p>She loved Carlisle, and insisted it had the best “CTY culture”. It also had great faculty. While Lancaster is more sciencey than Carlisle, I think the faculty is going to vary from course to course, not campus to campus so much. </p>
<p>She was homeschooled for 8th grade and took crafting the essay online, and it was very good - lots of feedback, etc.</p>
<p>My daughter attended two CTY day camps in the Baltimore area (Garrison Forest School); however, we do not have experience with the courses your daughter is interested in. If you do get feedback on here, be sure to ask the Hopkins people if the same person is still teaching. At the day camps, one forensics and one ancient history and both for younger kids, my daughter had one average instructor and one bad one. If I were doing it again knowing what I know now, I would ask about the instructors. </p>
<p>If you have heard that Lancaster is the best, I might also be inclined to have her find something of interest there because she probably has many interests. I know that my daughter would have loved the program had the instructors been better.</p>
<p>And I agree with Brooklynborn dad that it is instructor to instructor rather than place to place. Although we had the feeling at the day camps that both of DD’s instructors were working for the pay only.</p>
<p>I don’t know about Neuroscience, but Crafting the Essay is worthwhile, and my kids liked the Carlisle campus very much. It’s my opinion that it’s not worth taking one of the face-paced science courses unless it will get you out of taking the course in high school. I think CTY should be used for enrichment, not for test prep.</p>
<p>My daughter took Fast Paced High School Physics at LMU. She enjoyed the class and thought the instructor was great. If you want a kid’s-eye view of the various sites, check out Real CTY. (I’m not providing a link because I think it counts as a personal blog, but you can google it.)</p>
<p>I did CTY for three summers at Skidmore, and I took Crafting the Essay my first summer (between 8th and 9th grade). I found it to be a little tedious but very useful in getting me to really think about my writing; we split the time well between short writing exercises, drafting/editing our big personal essays (I think we wrote and edited 4 personal essays in the three week at about 4-6 pages each) and peer editing each other’s essays.</p>
<p>The only possible negative thing I would say is that it’s not the class to take if you’re already a good writer (both in terms of voice and also structure and grammar). CTY offers more intense writing classes that are usually filled with older and better writers, and they finally realized that taking Crafting the Essay shouldn’t be a prereq for the other writing classes. So if your child is already a solid writer one of the other classes might be a better choice.</p>
<p>Also, Skidmore is, imo, the best in terms of culture (and I speak mostly based on multiple accounts of friends who went to Skidmore and Siena or Skidmore and Baltimore), but of the options you’ve asked about I would say Carlisle in terms of community, traditions, etc. Baltimore is way too huge.</p>
<p>My son took the Neuroscience class at CTY and enjoyed the class. He did in in Carlisle campus, there seemed to be alot going on. It was his first sleepaway experience and he was youngest in the class, so socially it wasn’t great (though not terrible), he said it was mostly (please forgive me, not meant at all negatively in any way) intense Asian American kids with premed ambitions. Academically he really learned a lot, they dissected a sheep’s brain and he thought the course was in depth and covered alot of material. He did not take the physics or the essay class you are asking about, although he did take Cognitive Psychology at the Siena campus. Had a better social experience but thought the class wasn’t nearly as strong as Neuroscience.</p>
<p>^My son attended three different sites and he would tell you there are differences. The one that was the longest established of the ones he attended (Lancaster) had by far the most traditions. He didn’t go to Carlisle, his other two were Siena and St. Marys.</p>
<p>I sort of hinted at this in my other response to you, but IMO the fast paced science courses while fine, are simply not as interesting as their other courses. As an example in Game Theory and Probability, not only did they do some high powered math, (my son didn’t see similar work with matrices until he took a Quantum Physics course), but they coupled that math piece with real world issues like the Cuban missile crisis and price wars between Microsoft and Apple.</p>
<p>My S took three CTY summer classes at LMU in LA: Electrical Engineering, Probability & Game Theory and Fast Paced HS Physics. He was the least enamoured with electrical engineering, which gave him an early read as to whether he might want to go that direction in college (he’s a math/science guy.) He really enjoyed the Game Theory class. I also agreed that CTY is best for enrichment, although S did take the Fast Paced HS Physics, primarily because he wanted to position himself to take AP Physics C his junior year, as he likes physics. It did give him a good leg up with the AP class, he said.</p>
<p>FWIW, he’s now entering his second quarter as a freshman at Northwestern University, in its honors Integrated Science Program major. He’s casting about as to what his second major is, which is something that virtually all ISPers do. He’s very happy there.</p>
<p>Any opinions on the humanities classes? I think I have decided against Baltimore due to size and just too close to home. This will be my 8th graders first sleep away experience and his list of possible classes are: Logic, Ethics, Russian History, International Politics, Politics in Middle East and Existentialism. No clear first choice - some courses at Lancaster and other at Carlisle. I think as long as the rooms are air conditioned he would be happy at either place.</p>
<p>I heard that “Introduction to the Biomedical Sciences” is more popular than “Law and Politics in US History” in terms of the number of applicants. Anybody knows which of the CTY summer courses are most sought after?</p>
<p>Mom24boys: Logic. Hands down the most interesting class I took at CTY, and one that’s actually surprisingly useful. I loved that it was so different, both in material and in activities, from any traditional class. It’s a good combination of visual math, writing and problem solving.</p>
<p>Russian History is new, isn’t it, so I’d probably skip that one until it’s a bit more established and organized. Existentialism has a fairly ridiculous amount of reading, I’ve heard; I took another Philosophy class at CTY and easily had 100+ pages of reading a day.</p>
<p>I would generally say that kids who attend CTY who during the school year are underserved by their schools - not challenged, have no academically interested peers, etc, often view CTY as an amazing experience, sometimes living from summer to summer. Kids who attend academically intense schools during the year with challenging and interesting classes and have academically engaged peers tend to view it as a nice experience but nothing earth shaking. My son was in the latter category. He enjoyed it and it was good to have that summer option for a relatively young teen, but his and his friends’ experiences have been more in “good not great” category.</p>
<p>D had experience at Lancaster, Carlisle and Baltimore. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say her favorite session was at Baltimore for Genomics. The neuroscience class there seemed particularly strong, although this was several years ago. She had friends speak highly of the Existentialism course - I suspect most of those students were, as Brooklyn points out, a “nomore” - I’ve also heard the term “nevermore”. </p>
<p>D took Fast Paced Bio and also Advanced Chemistry prior to taking these subjects in school - I would be leery of relying on these courses as substitutes for the regular curriculum. D breezed through AP Chem and Honors Bio, though, and I think the CTY work was a real benefit. Like others have done, though, I would encourage you to select a course for enrichment purposes, not for acceleration.</p>
<p>“Kids who attend academically intense schools during the year with challenging and interesting classes and have academically engaged peers tend to view it as a nice experience but nothing earth shaking.”</p>
<p>everyone’s different. My DD was in a fairfax county GT center in 7th grade, and went to HS at TJ. She found CTY to be earth shaking. TJ kids were certainly academic peers, but the spirit at CTY was different. At least that is what she found. Maybe it was a Carlisle thing, cause that was mainly a humanities campus, very different atmosphere from TJ.</p>
<p>Both my kids did 4 years at Lancaster, and it was definitely life changing for both. They were from a not very academically challenging school district, so this was great for them. They had no experience with the courses you mentioned, but both did a fast-paced math, one algebra and one geometry, for the purpose of accelerating in math in high school and that worked out well. The major difference in the fast-paced classes is you primarily work alone, so there isn’t really the classroom give and take that comes with the other courses.</p>
<p>As Brooklynborndad says, this depends on the kid. D went to a rigorous private school that challenged her fully. While she enjoyed the CTY classes a lot (she took humanities courses for four summers, at Baltimore, Lancaster, and the last two years at Carlisle, her favorite) it was earth-shaking for her socially, and she is still very close to friends she made there (she graduated from college last spring).</p>