I was not one of those genius kids you see, but I knew a few of them, and I became great friends with them. I did Lancaster 4 years, and if you can handle not eating a peanut butter sandwhich or granola bars for 3 weeks, you should defintely go here. CTY is the kind of thing that (I believe) got me ready to go to college. You are basically, a college students at 13- 16 years old, you live in real dorms, get your first glimpse of a college cafeteria life. You get a sense of a college experience when you're there. You can find the people who are the Ubernerdhaxor1337 there and you can find your scholar athletes, or where I personally fell into, the theater crowd with the "Acting Improv". I benefited much more socially than intellectually by going to CTY. I was a self-rightous POS after 7th grade, and after my expereice at CTY I was humbled. I became more socialable in my regular school.</p>
<p>Frankly I thought CTY was rather lame. At the one I went to they wouldn't let you study outside of classes (they'd make you leave your textbook in the room) and walked around the buildings after lights-out just to make sure your lights were really out. Plus it's quite expensive and you don't end up remembering much of what you learned.</p>
<p>I suppose it could be fun for some people, though, and an above-average, hardworking student should do fine there, so long as she orders her own textbooks before going so she can study after study hall.</p>
<p>I'm a cty-nut. :) I've been going for 5 years, and have tested twice (once for younger students and once for older students). If anyone else has any questions, I'm more than willing to answer :P </p>
<p>and i have a long post about CTY on another thread so i'm lazy now...</p>
<p>Although CTY did not help me academically -- the information learned in those 3 week courses are very quickly forgetten believe me -- it did help me develop independent and social skills. For instance, for three weeks you get the experience of living at a college, dealing with a roommate and making decisions that would have otherwise been made by your parents. Just don't go to the site at Siena College; I went last year and it sucked big time. My first two years at JHU, however, were superb. </p>
<p>BigDaddy, you seem to be very prejudiced against this program. Several CTY alums have posted but you keep repeating that you think it's a scam. Yes, you have to shell out some bucks, but as we told you, it isn't a scam at all. Yes, you pay for testing. Is that testing worth it? DEFINITELY. You get to see where you stand compared to other gifted kids your age. It really motivates you to live up to your test scores. Is CTY some marvelous academic experience? No...it's a program for middle schoolers, what else do you expect besides mildly rigorous academic study? It's more about developing responsibility, independence, and meeting other like-minded kids in a learning-centered environment. It's what you make of it. The CTY programs for older kids are really not that great, but they're perfect for 5th-6th graders.</p>
<p>I'm a four-year alum of the program. I went seventh, eighth, nineth, and tenth grade to the JHU site. The summer after my freshman year of college, I worked as an RA at the Bethlehem site. I'd like to think that I've seen a couple of sides of the experience.</p>
<p>It's definitely worth going, but you do have to pick the right courses. My first two years, I only qualified for the Humanities classes. The writing course (I can't recall the exact name, maybe Writing the Personal Essay) was not worth it, in my opinion. The Geopolitics class wasn't very useful for school, but it left an indelible impression on my mind - I can remember being very impressed with some of the ideas Hobbes laid out in Leviathian and feeling that Machiavelli was an absolute fiend, as well as doing research on the IRA and Sinn Fein.</p>
<p>When I finally qualified for the science and math courses, that's when things really took off. I took Fast-Paced High School Chemistry and used it to take AP Chemistry in my sophomore year in high school - I earned a 5 on the AP exam and was one of the best students in the course. The next year, I took the self-paced math sequence and used it to skip trigonometry and precalc so I could go from Algebra II straight into AP Calculus AB, where I earned a 4 on the AP exam.</p>
<p>Even more important than any academic accomplishment was how being at CTY helped screw my head on straight. In my school district I was one of the best students. At CTY, I was middling, at best. It made me realize that while I might be hot stuff at home, out in the big wide world I'd have to work as hard as anyone else to succeed. It was also great to meet people from all over the country and indeed, from other parts of the world. Dealing with all sorts of people broadened my mind and made me see that I couldn't expect everyone to be like me.</p>
<p>So in short, if you can afford it and your child wants to go, do it. If you have any questions about my experience, both as a student and as an RA, you can PM me.</p>
<p>If the student is in middle school, taking the SAT is good practice anyway.
If she gets into SET, you get the free magazine and come college time, they write a quasi-rec to tell colleges she got the very high score she got in middle school.</p>
<p>I didn't do the summer programs or anything else there because I didn't want my parents to spend the money. Maybe if we were richer, or if I went to a crappier school district, I would have wholeheartedly.</p>