Reply to Is AAP selection really as random as this board makes it seem?

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Reply to "Is AAP selection really as random as this board makes it seem?"

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[quote=Anonymous]No one here knows how random or not that it is. I suspect that the people we hear from who think it is random are outliers who had kids with high scores or high GBRSs and were not accepted. The process is meant to be holistic so there is no guarantee for any child. The reality is that more then a majority of kids who are in-pool are accepted and half the kids who are parent referred. That doesn’t feel all that random to me.

I think they are looking for kids who are bright, demonstrate that they are interested in learning, and need a challenge. They are looking for kids who need more then Gen Ed. I think the curiosity and engagement piece is more important then people want to believe and that it is the down fall for some kids. But that is just based on the anecdotes posted here.

Looking at your list.

High Grades: What does a 4 mean? That a kid mastered what ever material that was presented to them. You are looking at grades from K-2, I would guess that the bar for attaining mastery is not all that high. I would expect most kids are getting 3s and 4s at this age. I know not all kids but probably more kids are getting 4s in ES then get As in MS and HS. I would expect that an above average kid who is paying attention will end up with 3s and 4s, and probably more 4s then 3s. So do the grades really point to a kid needing AAP? Probably not. I would guess that almost every kid applying to AAP has mainly 4s on their report card.

High test scores: Define a high test score? My son was solidly in the 135 range on the NNAT and the CogAT, His quant score was 140 and his non-verbal was 125. Is that a high score? I think it is in the 99th percentile. It seems high enough to me but I know people are thinking of kids in the 140’s. But here is the thing, people prep their kids for the NNAT and the CogAT. Heck, we bought a workbook for the CogAT and had DS do one of the practice tests. We did not even know the NNAT existed until we got the scores sent home so no prep there. We know that there classes that prep kids for the NNAT and the CogAT. The committee knows this and seems to weigh the tests with a grain of salt because they are aware of people prepping. Some of those high scores could be inflated by prep while some are natural. How does the committee know the difference?

GBRSs: Perfect GBRSs do not seem to be a guarantee of anything. I tend to think that what really matters are the comments that are made and less the actual GBRS. The comments need to match the score. Are there examples that explain why a child scored high on the GBRS or is the comment just that the child evidenced this trait? There is a part of me that thinks that perfect GBRS could even be a flag of a Teacher taking the easy way through the process making the comments more important. We know that plenty of kids with Frequently Observed and not Consistently Observed are accepted, could it be that Teachers who are willing to point out that a child is advanced in a lot of areas but not all is seen as being more discerning in their scores and the overall GBRSs are taken more seriously then a perfect GBRS with the comments not providing many examples?

No one has the slightest clue about work samples.

Reading this board you see parents discussing what they need to do to get their kid into AAP. Some are thinking of taking tests in different locations, some are sending their kids to prep classes, some are doing work books (guilty), some are planning out home work samples. The Committee knows all this is happening and they view applications with this in mind. [/quote]

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