<p>EK:</p>
<p>No need to knock CTY. It’s not for everybody, and no one is saying so. Lots of people love to go to the beach. We hate going to the beach. I rode a horse once. Never again.
S2 loved CTY; S1 loved his music camp.
The OP asked about CTY. He did not ask about horses and zoos, or even music camps. ;)</p>
<p>I wasn’t knocking it- however- I don’t feel that kids should feel pressured to do academics in order to " position themselves" for college.
I don’t have an impression one way or the other for OP, but others reading the forum, should not feel that they have to do certain things to attend college.
I realize that many parents and students on CC, * do , do those things* but for me- why you are doing it- is more important than what you are doing.</p>
<p>I agree with the others who have said that CTY is ultimately more about peers and the community than about the class you take. There are certainly generalizations, at least at the campus I went to, about who takes what class; those who take more individualized classes such as the Math classes tend to be more introverted, those who take humanities classes tend to be more social, as those classes require much more discussion, and the hard science classes, especially physics, tend to be full of older and incredibly devoted (to the camp) students. My point here is just that yes, you should take a class that interests you, because you’re doing it for 7 hours a day, but if your main concern is to get ahead in a certain subject you wouldn’t be doing CTY. If you’re doing CTY you’re smart and you like to learn, certainly, but you also want to be in the company of others with those characteristics.</p>
<p>EK: I understand what you’re saying about the pressure, especially on CC, to do things of a structured and academic nature during the summer, and to a degree I agree with you. But I have never met anyone, and I’ve met at least 200 CTYers, who did it for college.</p>
<p>I think CTY can be a great resource, particularly in areas that don’t have much for that age- and especially for those kids it is really important to have peers in CTY, even if they don’t in their own schools.</p>
<p>I think parents can get sucked into thinking that their child has to do something they can use to get merit aid or get into college though- we can see that just by reading other threads.</p>
<p>D had a friend who for instance wanted to work at the zoo, but her parents only allowed her to do it for one year & instead of doing CTY or other activities had her skip high school and go right to university.
She enjoyed it, but she also had a sense of being in a bubble of brilliant kids and it took awhile to get a bigger picture.</p>
<p>EK, since your D did not actually go to one of the CTY camp sessions, I think your view of it is a bit inaccurate.</p>
<p>The CTY experience includes dances every Saturday night, the CTY canon, Fairy Princess Day (when everyone dresses as a fairy princess…including boys who you would NEVER think would do it), pomengranate for nevermores (I think that’s the correct juice!), free time activities ranging from soccer to “tarp,” and all kinds of rituals and traditions that the kids themselves pass down to succeeding generations.</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between doing a distance learning course and attending one of the camps.</p>
<p>It is NOT something that most CTYers–certainly not the devoted ones–do to position themselves for college. It is something that they do to follow an intellectual passion, or simply a passion for intellectuality. They call themselves “nerd camp.” And they love it. (Some don’t, of course. S had a room mate one year who regarded the rest of the kids as just a bunch of geeks. Interestingly, his very first room mate turned up as a fellow freshman at his college. 
)</p>
<p>For most gifted kids, being in a bubble of brilliant, intellectual kids is the dream, not the reality.</p>
<p>Agree with Consolation. There are lots of smart kids who live in bubbles of mediocrity for nine months a year. Read the local paper and see athletes mentioned and lauded by name. Winners of state or even national awards? Not so much.
S actually did CTY after 7th and 8th grade. He wanted more challenging math, and for longer than 3 weeks. No one said a word about college during the two summers he was at CTY.</p>
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<p>Good answer, Consolation.</p>
<p>My youngest has done 2 summers of CTY. He loves it so much that he has stopped asking for much during the year. He doesn’t want us to not be able to afford to send him again.</p>
<p>“There are lots of smart kids who live in bubbles of mediocrity for nine months a year. Read the local paper and see athletes mentioned and lauded by name.”
<p>yes she didn’t really need to go to one of the camps because we were fortunate enough to be able to live in city, where she was able to attend private schools through 12th grade.
I realize that some really like it- there are certainly many @ Reed, for whom Reed was just a continuation of CTY.
;)</p>
<p>“i’m not an introvert. i like to be with people! my cty penpal said she was dying to get into the nerd camp. so am i.”
well, i was kind of wrong there. I CAN be an introvert sometimes… like if i get addicted to a book. yeah. and my penpal said that she had to get in nerd camp otherwise she’ll die. :)</p>
<p>EK:</p>
<p>It does not have to do with private school. I doubt that being in a private school would have accommodated my S any better than his public school did. It has to do with some kids having a thirst for learning certain things. Your D wanted to be with horses, my S wanted to do math and advanced science (as in 11th grade science while in 7th grade). You don’t work with horses in an academic camp, and you don’t do advanced math in a stable.
Please accept that different folks need different strokes. For some, CTY provides the very necessary strokes. And the kids in CTY know how to have fun, and to stop and smell the flowers. They’re not weird, pressured, unhappy (at least not while at CTY) social misfits.</p>
<p>I’d just like to correct a misapprehension of Longhaul’s (#38) - I was pleasantly surprised that the math-y classes were not at all like things they would have or could have gotten at school. My son got exposed to philosophy, economics and politics from the game theory class. He also learned matrix algebra, something he didn’t see again until taking a college level quantum mechanics class.</p>
<p>My son was more bemused by, rather than enchanted by, some of the weird traditions. (He didn’t get to Lancaster till his last year as a CTYer, so he didn’t have a bathrobe…)</p>
<p>Mathmom</p>
<p>I should have explained better – I beleive CTY summer should be used to test a subject that the student cannot get elsewhere (regular school/on-line courses).</p>
<p>In general, I would agree. In S’s case, it seemed simpler for him to take Fast-paced high school science in summer so he could go into AP courses and avoid the oh-so-slow and so un-challenging 8th grade science curriculum.</p>
<p>Longhaul, in general I agree with you, I think kids who do the fast paced ___ (insert math or science) here, miss out on the best that CTY has to offer, but that didn’t stop my son from doing one his third year. By then he was on the old end, and like marite’s son was ready to get a jump on the regular high school curriculum. (We also have really lousy chem teachers at the high school.) I’d have been happy if he’d stretched himself to do something more outside his comfort zone, he wasn’t willing, but I thought that some of the classes did more stretching than I would have expected.</p>
<p>As for doing non-academic things that would be S2, he did regular camp, and music camps instead.</p>
<p>we were lucky that the private school in our area was able to accomodate D in her broad interests, she had strong interests in the arts, so much so that she wanted to apply to an arts school after high school graduation.
She also had strong interest and preparation in the sciences, and her undergrad biology degree from Reed was supported from genetics research her 10th grade class did with Mary- Claire King and mitrochondria DNA.
She didn’t really need to do CTY- not every one does.
But it is good that the resources from Johns Hopkins and Duke are available for those who need that option.</p>
<p>EK, no one is arguing with you that everyone needs CTY!</p>
<p>We’re sending our 8th grader for the first time to CTY this summer to do either a writing or humanities course. Can anyone recommend one site over another? We are in NJ so either NY or PA would work. JHU might be too overwhelming. I am most interested in the social atmosphere, do the kids have fun, downtime activities etc. Thank you.</p>
<p>My S spent one summer at Union College. Kids did not like the site and CTY did not use it again after that first year. Next summer was in Skidmore near Saratoga, and that was a great experience as kids could occasionally walk into town, which is very nice. The Skidmore campus was also very good, with good sized rooms and decent food.</p>