Hi all!
I am currently attending a high school that offers gifted courses; however, I am not eligible to take them because I never took the test. I know many universities expect their applicants to take the most challenging courses at their schools. Will this negatively affect my chances?
Thanks in advance!!
Hm…how come you never took the test? I think it matters to what degree your reasoning for not taking it was in your control–i.e., less control is better and you may be able to explain that somewhere on your application.
Thanks for the reply!!
I live in Canada. Students here take the test when they are in the 3rd grade. Unfortunately, I didn’t move to Canada until after the 5th grade. The test would cost me a huge sum of money if I took it with a private phycologist.
Would this be easy to explain though?? I guess my concern is that people at the admission office would deny me without even paying much attention to the rest of my application, since they have thousands of others to get through?
Most (though not all) american colleges use a holistic review process, so they do look at every aspect of your application. If you or your guidance counselor wrote about this, then they would see why you aren’t in gifted classes.
Does your school offer any other advanced classes, like Honors or AP/IB?
Okay, that sounds like it’s definitely out of your control then. See if you can get your GC to explain that.
Hi @yonceonhismouth! The only two types of courses available at my school are gifted and regular. So the fact that I didn’t take the gifted courses probably won’t affect my chances? Also would it help if I took some AP exams outside of school?
@Philpsych thanks! I will try to talk to my GC.
@MurphyBrown students test better at a younger age, especially females. The system is just a reminder that what you do always follows you, even if it doesn’t define you. I think it’s messed up that it costs so much, but if Stephen Hawkings grandson was to move to Canada when he was 10, he probably would’ve already been tested. Where I live (in the US), they test everyone in second grade.
Hi @MurphyBrown !
It’s kind of different in Canada. The 6th letter in the course code identifies the type of the course; however, Canadian universities can’t see anything past the 5th letter (in other words, they don’t care whether if you are gifted). Therefore, regular and gifted students go to approximately the same schools in Canada (of course, there are more gifted students going to better universities because they try harder in class).
As for American universities, in the past few years, at my school, only gifted students were ever accepted into American schools. So that made me wonder - if the gifted program played a huge role in terms of admission. Since there are also similar gifted programs in American high schools, I was just wondering how it works over there.
I think there might be ways to take the test though the school board, but I’ve been very reluctant to find out more. My grades are very good in regular classes (1st or 2nd in most of my classes), and I am fairly certain that I won’t be able to maintain that in the gifted program. A student can only be admitted into the gifted program if placed in the 98th percentile on the test, and I’m not sure if I can do that well.
(So does anyone know what would happen if I actually can’t take gifted courses? Would colleges mind?)
Thank you all so much!!