<p>I don’t think that any experience in 7th grade would be relevant to a college application process 5 years later.
Unless you perhaps peaked as a 13 yr old by curing cancer or achieving world peace.
Your subsequent achievements should be more notable than a test score in junior high.
Of course if you * did * peak as a young teen, you might not want to mention it, because the adcoms might wonder what happened.</p>
<p>I would disagree with xiggi that allowing your kid to take the test early is " pushing".
That sounds similar to judgements that others made about my daughters voracious reading habits.
They accused me of " forcing" her to read!
:)) </p>
<p>“Unless you perhaps peaked as a 13 yr old by curing cancer or achieving world peace.”
-If you do any of these, you really truly do NOT need to go to college, why bother whne you have your own business / set up whatever, which is proven by several very well known drop outs.
thank goodness that most 7th graders are smarter than us and woudl refuse to take a darn test that proves absolutely nothing, just complete waste of time, unless they have to take it because they are planning to go to college right after 7th grade, then they have to have a stupid test (which is pretty stupid if any of posters here took it, I had looked, it pretty much tests middle school material and that might be a problem with the advanced kid in HS, the kid who needs just re-fresh the memory from few years before to have a decent score)</p>
<p>-If you do any of these, you really truly do NOT need to go to college, why bother whne you have your own business / set up whatever, which is proven by several very well known drop outs.</p>
<p>I disagree. I think there is great value in the opportunity to learn from those with a depth of knowledge in your field of interests, and in fields which you didn’t even realize you were interested, but those courses were required by your college for your degree!
Of course you could perhaps assemble mentors to apprentice with on your own, but how many of us actually do that?</p>
<p>One more way that taking the SAT in 7th grade helped older son was by showing everyone how far out of the norm he was. It meant that the administration stopped questioning me when I was advocating for acceleration in math or science, because it was obvious that he was probably ready for a more demanding curriculum. It also gave me the confidence to ask.</p>
<p>And since the kids didn’t study more than half an hour by taking the practice test that came with the registration materials, they didn’t exactly waste a lot of time. All their friends were spending that Saturday the same way in any event.</p>
<p>Our city school system is a Title 1 district and often the focus goes to the low performing students who need additional efforts for the core subjects. High performing students have good opportunities for AP at the high school, but not so much at the middle school. Kids who were identified for Duke Talent Search in my district were given the option of supplemental test prep after school for 4-5 months and I think that was a bonus for both of mine. S qualified for the summer programs and he was able to accelerate in math as the result. He attended TIP for 3 summers. D didn’t qualify for the Duke programs, but did qualify for a summer program during high school at the university which she later attended. </p>
<p>Do I think it helped them get into college? Not directly, but the summer programs did stimulate their academic interests and allow them to work with small groups of gifted students. D had the same two team teachers in her American Studies (AP US History/AP English Lit) class her junior year that she’d had the previous year for the World Studies sequence. One of them told me she saw a maturity in D’s responses and that she wasn’t quite as lost in the large class as she had been during her sophomore year. </p>
<p>D is now in a masters program in higher education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College where Camilla Benbow is the dean. Dean Benbow was one of the creators of CTY at Hopkins and D has “followed her” since she was a PTY student and then as an undergrad. Her research indicates that the summer experiences are very valuable for students, but are they the only way that students can get academic enrichment during the summers? Certainly not, but providing similar experiences does require that parents seek out and plan those experiences and some parents just don’t have the skill set to do so. A young man a year behind my S in middle school was from a low income family and the middle school staff shepherded him through the Duke program and the process of getting scholarship dollars to summer programs. They later helped him get a scholarship to Choate. After high school, he attended Vanderbilt and earned a degree in engineering. I’m not sure that would have happened if he hadn’t had the opportunities that began with his Duke Talent Search participation.</p>
<p>You are disagreeing with something I never wrote.
This is what I wrote …As far as further participation the few kids who were pushed by their parents found the residential programs entertaining. </p>
<p>" All their friends were spending that Saturday the same way in any event. "
This must be a cultural thing. My daughter was spending that Saturday playing soccer. She would have been extremely unhappy if I had told her she has to miss the game and the after-game fun with her friends to sit around and take a test. In fact, I suspect she would have refused.</p>
<p>I already have MAP standardized test scores from testing done at her school so I know how her math and reading skills compare to high school senior scores. That didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, and the school doesn’t provide anything at all to kids who score well. I know this, because I did bring up her test scores when I was trying to get the school to provide some more appropriate academics for her, and they couldn’t care less about test scores. Waving SAT scores at them would not have helped. So I don’t see any purpose to it. </p>
<p>"I think there is great value in the opportunity to learn from those with a depth of knowledge "
-and get brainwashed…Anybody can learn themselves without it, those who have achieved at 13 (geniuses) have no need for UG, Albert E. realized that…</p>
<p>My son was “invited” to take it. He did the JHU-CTY program. He didn’t want to take the test for its own sake, but was interested in doing camps. So we told him if he could qualify he could go to camp. We actually took him to the awards ceremony and my parents came for it and we went out to lunch in the inner harbor afterwards. He was really proud of himself and thrilled my parents came and it was a really great day for him.</p>
<p>He did camps for a few years and it was really a saving grace in middle school for him to be ‘average’ and see there were tons of kids out there like him and people got his humor. He also got to live at a few different college campuses.</p>
<p>During his interview at the college he attends I guess the conversation somehow came around to it. Apparently he asked the guy - have you ever heard of Johns Hopkins CTY? lol And talked about how the robotics program he took there got him interested in computers. I don’t think it’s shocking to any college admissions counselor that kids do these programs, but I think it at least backed up his intellectual curiosity went back to earlier childhood. I can’t imagine it was a tipping point.</p>
<p>Without a doubt, TIP and CTY has impacted our child. Started at another university sponsored two week summer program in 6th grade. Summer after 7th and 8th have been spent at TIP in the three week terms. Child had an opportunity to complete the fast track Algebra 2 course at 12. Child took a science course this past summer. Attending was child’s idea, not parents, and they were very generous with scholarships. My older kids were NEVER interested in spending summer doing academics but this child in particular plans the entire year around “summer programs”. It amazes me how the group of kids and counselors keep in contact during the school year and how much they look forward to seeing each other in the summer. Just taking the ACT/SAT tests was a motivator and eye opening experience for my child. I did feel for my older children and their friends who had to take it on the same day,same location, same room with my TIP kid. If you can avoid that, highly recommend </p>
<p>In the DC metro area, enough middle schoolers test for these programs that some of the SAT sites have designated testing rooms just for the younger kids. </p>
<p>“I did feel for my older children and their friends who had to take it on the same day,same location, same room with my TIP kid. If you can avoid that, highly recommend.”</p>
<p>When my older 2 took it in 7th grade they were in the same room as juniors/seniors based on last name. ugh. However when my youngest took it last year they put all the TIP kids in a separate room. I think they learned it was better to keep them separate.</p>
<p>You should have seen the look in the faces of a room full of boisterous football players when tiny S1 went into the room, unfazed, and walked toward his seat. </p>
<p>I took the ACT and SAT for Northwestern’s CTD program. I never participated in any of the camp, but it ended up being extremely beneficial for me. I’m not sure if the other programs do this, but with my results, I received a pamphlet in the mail that had a list of academic competitions and extracurricular activities one could participate in. I think I somehow also got the idea to self study AP Computer Science from that pamphlet. As someone who lived in a school district that didn’t offer any of these competitions or ECs, it was definitely helpful to have this resource. Though this probably wouldn’t be too helpful for anyone already on College Confidential.</p>
<p>I enjoyed taking the tests, and was not stressed out at all. I didn’t really enjoy soccer and was horrible at it, so I think I would have been pretty upset if my parents made me play soccer instead of taking the ACT/SAT.</p>
<p>My son did well on the 7th-grade ACT (24) and took algebra II at Duke after his eighth-grade year. He was exposed to some academically driven kids and came home determined to work harder and be more active in school. I suppose he will list that he attended on his college application or resume, but the real benefit has been that he was encouraged to work harder and participate more fully in school.</p>
<p>I would not expect his participation in the program to count for anything in the admission process, but if it makes him a better student then that will be noted.</p>
<p>My kids didn’t do it but were asked to. The bar for invitation was set pretty low where we live. </p>
<p>The kids didn’t do it because 1) they had other stuff going on the testing weekends and 2) they were adequately stimulated intellectually. </p>
<p>I can see the benefit of participating in other situations, some of which have been covered here. For example, if I had a child who was very bright and felt like no one was like him, I would have signed him up and hoped he made it to one of the camps. If I needed to show my kid’s school that he needed additional stimulation, I would have signed up. </p>
<p>I grew up in a small town where there was no one like me in interests and drive. I would have loved to have gone to a Duke TIP camp. </p>
<p>The kids here who went to camps? There weren’t many. I don’t know if they didn’t qualify after being chosen to take the test, or if parents didn’t want to pay. The few I know of didn’t wind up being world beaters. They weren’t the top kids in their graduating classes. </p>
<p>My oldest never did TIP but took the SAT twice in middle school. In 7th, he took it to qualify for SET. In 8th, he took it through JHU’s CTY.</p>
<p>Both tests were beneficial in some way. The 7th grade score qualified him for SET and we found SET to be of moderate benefit. More than that, he used his scores to apply to audit a physics class at a local private u in 8th grade.</p>
<p>His 8th grade scores qualified him for the Grand Awards Ceremony in Baltimore. My mom paid for he and my dh to attend and they saw an Orioles game. Now that was worth it! :-)</p>
<p>And actually, he was considering applying to colleges three years early since his 8th grade SAT I and SAT II scores were high enough, so had he chosen to go that route, those scores would have been very important, but he pulled out and attended college at the normal age.</p>
<p>He did mention his 8th grade top score award on his college apps, I <em>think</em>, but I don’t remember for sure, but I’d guess it was everything else he did subsequent to that, that got him into his colleges.</p>
<p>I think being familiar with the SAT was probably tied for the biggest benefit. He was able to take it once in high school and was very satisfied with the score.</p>
<p>Oh, and he never did any summer camps. Wasn’t interested as there was always plenty to do around here.</p>
</p>