<p>You can qualify and register on your own. They are a portal into SAT or ACT testing, and have a bunch of other enrichment programs.</p>
<p>Also, here is a 3-week residential summer program for gifted middle schoolers at Truman University, a quality college in Kirksville MO. They supervise the kiddos VERY closely and have games and activities going all the time they are not in class or sleeping.</p>
<p>Upon reflection, I think taking the SAT in 7th or 8th grade is a good thing for these gifted children, especially in English. In Math they are more easily "bumped" ahead to be working at their ability; in English they may be reading difficult literature on their own, but no one ever ASKS them about it. The SAT reading exposes them to passages and questions on a whole different plane, so they get a glimpse of what is out there, academically.</p>
<p>I mean, of course, kids who are able to see the test as a challenge and not get all stressed about it.</p>
<p>lkf725 - Catholic schools provide even less information and generally don't have counselors or gifted programs. We stumbled upon some information on the internet about the various summer programs when our daughter was in seventh grade. We independently signed her up to take the SAT. She qualified her for the Duke TIP summer program but we found it a bit out of our budget range. Instead she attended the
3-week summer Joseph Baldwin Academy at Truman State University which MissouriGal mentioned. About two thirds of the attendees were from Missouri with the rest from all parts of the United States. The 7th - 9th grade students take one non-credit course during the three week period which covers basically the same material covered in a three credit hour college course. Courses avaiable included Visual Basic Computer Programming, Arthurian Literature, Physics (for non-science majors), History of the Vietnam War, and Studio Art. Well-run program with lots of supervised activities outside of class time. We would hightly recommend this program.</p>
<p>One advantage of taking the SAT in seventh grade was that it gave our daughter familiarity with the pacing and format of the test in a no pressure environment. Her preparation including working through a few sample SAT's in the "10 Real SAT's" book and a few weeks working through problems in an SAT math prep book. She didn't do any formal preparation for the verbal section. </p>
<p>In her sophomore year of high school she took the PSAT ( again a no pressure situation ) and scored well above the cut-off for National Merit.
When she took the PSAT in October of her junior year, she was confortable knowing that if she did as well or even somewhat worse than the previous year she would be a National Merit Semi-Finalist. A couple of weeks later she took the SAT and ACT was able to forget about standardized tests for the rest of her high school career.</p>
<p>As a student who took the SATs in the 7th and 8th grade levels for JHU's CTY, I recommend it highly. Be careful about your expectations, though. I never got the hang of those 3-letter tests, and could barely stand to study/prepare for them. I got somewhere around the 1200 level; slightly less in 7th, slightly more in 8th. Keep in mind that your scores now aren't indicative of your score in HS; I ended up getting lucky and rising to a 1590 (despite my parents' fears that I was forever screwed on the SATs).</p>
<p>In any case, I think the real advantage of taking the SATs early on is mostly qualification for programs such as CTY. Not only is the quality of instruction really great, but you've also got the option of taking classes you'd never have the chance to in most high schools (Theory of Computation, Game Theory, Number Theory, etc). Personally, I recommend those courses over the for-credit ones that let you skip classes. </p>
<p>The best thing about CTY, though, is the people you'll meet. I went to CTY many years ago, but I'm still in contact with many of my buddies from the program. They were deep, passionate, and bright people, and we spent many a night staying up having long discussions ranging from girls to the big bang. Today, all of us are heading to some pretty good universities (my roommate's at CMU, other friends are at Brown, Columbia, etc, I'm heading for Princeton this fall). My friend, who also went to CTY, reacquainted with many of her CTY buddies at Harvard this year and talks about how many of them rose very high in the Intel STS and Siemens-Westinghouse programs and others. CTY offers the chance to study some pretty cool topics with some pretty cool people. The learning and friendships are priceless.</p>
<p>I'm so jealous reading this thread. I have a bad taste about JHU/CTY because their programs - even the distance learning - are so outrageously expensive. Both of my sons qualified for their distance and residential programs, and would have enjoyed the residential, but it is absolutely impossible financially. they do have financial aid, but only if you qualify for free/reduced lunch - and lucky for us, we are above that threshold.</p>
<p>My son took the SAT in 7th and qualified for a special program through which JHU tracks a percentage of students who scored above 700 on either section. Not a bad thing because he is interested in JHU.</p>
<p>So many kids take the SAT early now, for CTY or TIP, I don't even know that it is all that meaningful anymore, actually.</p>
<p>Both our D's took the SAT early in 7th/8th grade, for Midwest Talent Search. No prepping, just waltzed in and did what they could, cheerfully left out entire math sections they knew nothing about.</p>
<p>Spooked the <em>hell</em> out of all the high-school kids around them, though - both petite kids (figuratively) slamming down their answer books way ahead of time, announcing "I'm out!" (like Elaine in that famous Seinfeld episode), and sitting there with exaggerated sighs and eye-rolling till it was time to leave.</p>
<p>S took SAT in 7th grade as part of the Duke TIP program. As Medusa said, the Duke summer programs were too pricy for us. He wasn't stressed by it at all since a good sized group of friends from his middle school were taking it with him. Loved that he got to miss a day of school for the awards presentation at a local college.</p>
<p>Geeze optimizerdad, I'm glad my above average (lol) son didn't take it with your Ds. I bet those high school kids just loved the eye rolling.
I guess I'm the only dissenting opinion here but we aren't in the Midwest and don't have the Talent Search thing. So..here it is...there are lots of posts with parents saying "it didn't stress them out" but how do you really know? The parent expectation level here is sky high. How many of those kids asked their parents if they could take the SAT? And I am betting lots of posters told everyone they could think of that their 7th or 8th grader was taking the SAT.</p>
<p>Orjr, make sure you explore other options closer to home. In our area, kids who qualify for CTY also get a "voucher" which allows them to take a college course at a couple of local colleges for free, whether or not your kid attends CTY. We weren't able to take advantage of it due to transportation and timing issues, but we know several kids who did and it was a fantastic benefit to having taken the SAT in 7th grade. We know kids who advanced in science, math, or just took a writing seminar, and it was a lifesaver... especially if you've got a school system which isn't terribly supportive of enriched education.</p>
<p>Talent Search testing can take place anywhere the SAT or ACT is administered.
As for stress, a 7th or 8th grader has much less riding on the results than a junior of senior. I can vouch that my S was much more relaxed about it than the high schoolers taking the test. All he had at stake was his summer plan. They had college admissions to worry about.</p>
<p>almost forgot... although our school system does not, I know of several which will pay for residential CTY or Distance learning as long as the class taken is something not offered in the local HS. So.... for all you people whose HS's have axed AP Physics or BC Calc, something to look into.</p>
<p>The programs to which high scores give the student entry were way too expensive for our family too, so in that sense it was a disappointment to my kids. They did well, qualified, but couldn't attend due to cost (hey, we could start a death of the dream school thread for the middle school set!).</p>
<p>If my child were not in advanced math and had not taken algebra and some geometry also, then I would not have allowed it. Otherwise, I do think it could be very stressful for the student to see so many problems he doesn't know how to tackle or vocab. words he doesn't understand. He might lack the perspective to fully realize that he WILL be able to handle the test better when he's older. That sense of helplessness he feels Sat. morning could really cause future SAT anxiety in some kids.</p>
<p>Another potential pitfall our family experienced was that our middle child did not score as high as her brother did at the same age. This undermined her confidence at age 12 and she began saying that she stinks in math. </p>
<p>The score can tell you somewhat whether or not your child is on track to get decent scores as a junior. My guess is that scores generally rise by about 200 points from 7th to 11th grade. Is that about right for what you saw with your kids?</p>
<p>
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My guess is that scores generally rise by about 200 points from 7th to 11th grade. Is that about right for what you saw with your kids?
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I think about 100 points per year. A lot may depend on whether you've got a math wiz who has less room grow. I think overall my son's scores rose about 450-500 points from 6th to 11th grade.</p>
<p>I took it in both 7th and 8th grade. My score in 8th grade was 200 points higher than my score in 7th grade (interestingly enough, the majority of that difference was in english, not math). Then, when I took it as a junior in HS, I went up another 280 points. I didn't study all that much (maybe took a practice test the night before) when I was in high school, but I think just being familiar with the test helped a lot. I would encourage you to have your son take it if he wants to. It certainly can't hurt.</p>