<p>Well CTY was my older guy’s idea of fun - he was not an outdoor guy and did not want to “play outside”. My younger son on the other hand said, “Why in the world would I want to do school in the summer?” The one other benefit of taking the SAT early was that after the older kid got scores that put him in the 80th or 90th percentile of high school seniors, I stopped getting flack about all parents thinking their kids needed acceleration. They got that he really was gifted and he’d be happier in more advanced classes.</p>
<p>My son took the SCAT test in 8th grade for CTY qualification. He scored pretty highly according to the data they provide, but it’s not a usual test (CTY owns it, I believe), so there wasn’t really anything to show the school system. I don’t think having an equivalent SAT score at that point (700+ according to CTY) would have made much of a difference in how I dealt with the school system, but I don’t know. He never did any distance courses or camps through CTY.</p>
<p>Taking the SCAT test was a lot easier for us logistically than taking the SAT. You just set up an appointment at a testing center. The test is computer-adaptive and only about an hour long. The test center for us was in the next town over next door to a laser tag place, so he was happy to take the test and play laser tag after. I don’t think enough is known publicly about the test for anyone to prep.</p>
<p>All this “they should be out playing” stuff is pure BS. My kid took the SAT in 7th grade for CTY, with no prep. It was his choice. He attended the summer programs for 4 years, on scholarship, and took advantage of an online course one year to fix a bad placement. He adored CTY. It was the highlight of his year. Yes, some kids actually enjoy reading Nietzsche and Aristotle and Sartre and discussing philosophy at that age. <em>And</em> get plenty of time being outdoors, being physical. Can we please cut the anti-intellectual crap?</p>
<p>^^^ That is what worked for your son and for your family. It is one path among many. Could your son have discovered Sartre or Aristotle without taking a SAT in middle school? Who knows, but there plenty of people who might have or discovered a path to that purported intellectualism all the while playing outside during a part of a 24 hours day. </p>
<p>Some kids are happy at CTY and others at a lacrosse camp. Does not mean both cannot enjoy athletics AND be interested in intellectual pursuits. Angular kids exist and so do lil’ Pic de la Mirandole - pun intended, Jean-Paul! </p>
<p>My D2 took the SAT in 8th grade, scored really well, and was able to use those scores to attend the Davidson THINK program for two summers. Most fun she ever had before getting to college. Plus, it gave her an idea of what a high intensity college would be like. Which in turn influenced her college search (she craved the intensity). She got into all the “high intensity” colleges she applied to, and is a very happy sophomore at one of them now. I personally think taking the SAT in 8th grade was a big stepping stone to where she is now, although we couldn’t have predicted how it would play out then.</p>
<p>The more familiarity with the test one has, the better. By the time today’s 8th graders take an SAT that count, it will be the revised test, however.</p>
<p>Back in the day before CC (1992) this was the rationale for above level testing:</p>
<p>“The purpose of the talent search programs is to discover extreme math and verbal abilities among junior high school students who “hit the ceiling” of an in-grade standardized achievement test, that is, those who score at or above the 97th (in some cases, 95th) percentile. The students then take the SAT (normally taken by college-bound juniors and seniors) as an above-level test to help determine levels of ability. The SAT, with its high ceiling, is an effective test for highly gifted students, and plays a uniquely useful role.”</p>
<p>Hansen, J.
Understanding Our Gifted
Open Space Communications, Inc.
Vol. 4, No. 4
March/April 1992 </p>
<p>The test has changed a lot so I don’t really know if this applies as well today.</p>
<p>It has nothing to do with "anti-intellectualism, rather just letting 12 an 13 year olds be. All this rush to speed things up as if life is a race is nuts. Reading the thread on our generations college application experiences shows how far we have fallen off the wagon. </p>
<p>This is my opinion and, of course, anyone is free to disagree with me. But the OP asked a question and I gave my opinion. </p>
<p>My kid was bored silly with middle school curriculum (and most of her fellow middle schoolers). Middle school is just one big experience in marking time for many gifted kids. There are few accelerated classes, and a lot of their classmates are still trying to master basics they need for high school classes. If taking the test gives a kid like that the opportunity to try summer activities or get into other programs that feed their intellectual interests, who are you to judge? Another benefit of taking the SAT was she was invited into an online forum group run by Johns Hopkins for gifted kids. She found great online friends who shared her interests and passions that she just couldn’t find in her middle school or our community in real life. She still chats regularly with some of them seven years later. You act like somehow she would have been happier hanging out locally with kids who had no interest in entomology, ethics in science, philosophy, and some other subjects she was digging into on her own in middle school. This all had nothing to do with her college apps (or even school acceleration, she graduated with her high school class with no grade skips). To me it sounds like you are mixing up the pressure of the college app arms race with meeting the needs of kids who really want and need more intellectual stimulation than their normal school environment gives them.</p>
<p>Now… I don’t think the OP has come back and said why the teacher wants this kid to take the SAT. But it could open doors for programs and opportunities for him that aren’t apparent now. It did for my kid.</p>
<p>No, I am not confusing the two. It’s all on the same continuum, imo. </p>
<p>I think it’s nuts, but you don’t have to think that. </p>
<p>I don’t support overall acceleration in the form of skipping a grade. However, I think there are good reasons for acceleration in particular subject areas, particularly mathematics, depending on the strength and variety of the normal school curriculum. How interesting can finding the roots of quadratic expressions in one variable possibly be, if the topic runs for three years in the school curriculum, and the student grasps it immediately? </p>
<p>You can throw in the possibility of complex roots of quadratic equations, you can make connections to all of the conic sections, and to general quadratic forms, but that’s about it, without covering some advanced mathematics before the student returns to the topic.</p>
<p>My answer to the question in the first paragraph is: Extremely interesting, actually, but not in a high-school curriculum, nor in enrichment classes except at a very, very few schools. It takes group theory and the work of Galois before you get there–and there’s a lot of intervening ground to be covered, starting from high school algebra.</p>
<p>When we started looking into this almost 20 years ago there were not that many tests.Today’s “one test good, ten tests better” philosophy is a good example of the law of diminishing returns. However, 7th-8th grade is a good time to find out where you stand academically when you start to figure your high school options. There’s stiff competition for the limited “magnet” programs available especially at the public schools. So yes, unfortunately, it’s a race of some kind.</p>
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<p>Please note that <em>I</em> am not the one who made a pronouncement about what all kids “should” be doing. I merely responded to it.</p>
<p>Op,
Haven’t read the other responses to this thread. But to answer your question…All SATs that are taken prior to 9th grade are deleted by College Board and are not included in a kid’s High school SAT reports. There is no limit to how many times you can take the SAT. People claim anecdotes of 3 or kid starts to look lame, but there is no limit at all. I’m a fan of “one and done.” (i.e. study hard and take the test 1 time only).</p>
<p>@j’adoube,
“Today’s “one test good, ten tests better”” </p>
<p>LOL! Great line that made me think of Animal Farm and cracked me up!</p>
<p>I am was in the same place as @quantmech, @consolation, and @intparent. We had recently moved and the middle school kids were cruel to my DS. He was in middle school, gaining his identity, and likely wondering what was wrong with him. He took the test for CTY qualification, attended, and found his “tribe”. He came back that summer with more happiness and self confidence and renewed vigor at a point where he was really discouraged and feeling out-of-place in his own school. He was able to see in others at his school that love of study and seek them out. As @intparent said, for us it was about immediate learning and self-development, not about positioning for better position in some phantom race.</p>
<p>We saw the test as diagnostic. The lack of confidence was ours. Xiggi says earlier “A cynical way of looking at this is that our kindergartens are filled to the rafters with gifted students and plenty in middle school. Too bad that the numbers melt like ice cream in the Sahara by the time they take the PSAT.” We had chosen the public school gifted program since kindergarten and were afraid something like this would happen. S1 couldn’t have cared less what he got on the SAT in 7th grade for Duke TIP but it made us feel more secure in our decision that he did well and continued to do so until his last tests in Jr. year. What impressed him the most (puny 12 yr old) was taking it at a college site along with some high school’s ginormous whole football team. He never attended any of the TIP programs</p>
<p>I don’t know the reason that the OP is asking about the SAT in 8th grade, but can share our personal experience. </p>
<p>Both of my kids took the SATs in 7th and in 8th grades as part of the JHU/CTY Talent Search. They did no prep and this involved just one Saturday morning (to the critics who said they should be out playing…both my kids were heavily involved in EC endeavors including year round sports and this was just one morning and had nothing to do with thoughts of college admissions). </p>
<p>The test had several benefits. One is that their scores were high enough to receive awards from JHU/CTY and we attended a state-wide ceremony that honored these students and it was a nice sense of an academic achievement/recognition event. My kids never considered the summer CTY programs (nothing against these great programs, but my kids opted to attend summer programs that were not academic in nature). However, due to their scores on the SAT, it qualified both kids to take long distance courses in math and in writing via JHU/CTY at some point in their middle or high school careers, which was great as they needed these certain levels of coursework that they could not get at their public school. Further, both my kids required a lot of academic accommodations in their K-12 schooling due to their “advanced” learning needs. Our school system and state did not have gifted programs. Our elementary school individualized and made many accommodations for both girls. But once they hit the middle school (grades 7/8), that became a BIG issue. Having the SAT scores in hand, was just ONE piece that we could add to the rationale for academic accommodations, which involved many things such as accelerating in certain subjects (going into the HS in middle school, for example), independent studies, long distance courses, and so forth. It helped adding those SAT scores when talking with the schools about meeting their learning needs. Lastly, there was some value in seeing what SATs were like and what would be coming in their HS years and getting a general sense of that and longer range goals. All in all, for my kids, it was a good experience for its own sake at the time and not in reference to any race for college admissions. There was no pressure whatsoever. </p>
<p>The great reason is that he still remembers all the little kiddie math that is on the SAT. SAT has very little of the HS math (maybe none). Many kdis that ate advanced in math do not realize that they have to re-fresh old material and do not do as well as they thought. I hear it over and over. If he is the one who would sit down and prepare for SAT, then taking it now does not make much sense. But he will have to spend time re-freshing math. Actually, math was the only subject that D. was preapring, no other preparation made sense. She got decent score and compensated her predictably low Reading score.</p>
<p>One more benefit of taking SAT for CTY is that some CTY Talent Search participants receive a one-course scholarship to a local college to be taken during high school, prestigious LAC in our case</p>