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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Please remember teacher recommendations are important.  If a teacher thinks your child's needs are being met, and will continue to be met, in the home school they won't recommend a move.  It isn't always about being the smartest.Home schools can handle smart.  HGC is about thinking differently too.  It is not for everyone.  Congrats to those families that got in and sorry to those that are disappointed.   [/quote]

There is more to it. Per definition the program is for EXCEPTIONALLY and HIGHLY gifted children.
It is not for HIGH ACHIEVERS. Those are just smart students. MCPS is filled with them
to the brim due to the profile of the families that are in the county. There is at least 30% very good students
per class and in some areas even 50% and more. Not every child is gifted.

If your child is not gifted and for some reasons you will manage "to beat the system" and have a kid
in the gifted program, you are hurting a kid at the end. Here is how. Every other, or most other kids
will be highly gifted and the contrast between the truly gifted students and those who are not became
painfully and quickly obvious among the center students. The bottom of the scale students starting
having problems with everything,the learning style is different there and requires tons of quick and
creative thinking and it has to be done on the fly, those kids do not have time to go home and cram
and prepare for discussions or problems. They have to think and they think like a wind.
When they write, they write like a wind. Gifted kids  will have written  a few pages paper before the teacher
ends reading the topic of the paper, they don't even have to go home to finish it.
A kid who is barely managing quickly became  the "dumb" kid in the class and those kids
aside from being gifted are not sincerely nicest in the world. It can hurt your child in the most profound way,
because one thing is to get into a gifted program, another is to survive there and t hrive.
If a kid won't advance from that program to the next level, middle school level, which, if you think
was hard to get to the elementary gifted, then think again. (Elementary gifted has 6 centers,
middle gifted program for the same area has 2 Gifted centers, and anyone can apply again).

I saw a lot of kids who either dropped out of the Gifted program, or did not even apply to middle gifted program,
or applied and did not pass the exams. Each of them is devastated through the process to a degree.
Imagine being labeled as "gifted" and then all of the sudden you are not gifted anymore.
It takes huge toll on those kids. Huge.  When a kid form a gifted program comes back to the main
stream, they feel like they did not delivered, that they are inferior, and the rest of the kids also
see them as some form of a looser. This is very unhealthy at the end.

Many parents try for gifted program even if they have so so students. May of those kids get
hurt by this. It depends on the personality of a kid but every kid more less takes a hit.
Smart parents who know that their kid does not have a chance in the run or at the center,
do not subject kids to this. Many parents prefer a kid who has self esteem and believes
that they could get in if they wanted but they don't want rather then the same kids being
put to the test and fail. Some kids will happily try and fail and go on with their life happily
thinking if I did not try I would not know. But most kids take the failure to their hearts.
It is not easy to get over the fact that you were "rejected" from the program.
It still hurt less in any case then getting into the center and then dropping off not being
able to keep up. It also hurts a lot when kids form elementary gifted did not make
to the middle gifted. It hurts plenty because the middle of the pack kids who are doing
so so in the center also hope to get further but the bar is very very high .

Anyway, this is just to make you realize that if your kid did not get into gifted program
not to take it to the heart as it is better not to get accepted then fail. The people who
select kids, they know who will have best chance in the run. 
There is not much preparation that you can really do to get into the program because
those things that truly matter are nothing you can prepare  yourself to.
All those crammers from Kumon sooner or later drop off the game. It only can get
you this far. Gifted centers are NOT about crammers.

This should  be  helpful to see how your kid measures up for the game:
Page 10 - Smart vs. Gifted
Page 11- High Achiever vs. Gifted Learner

http://www.davis.k12.ut.us/cms/lib09/UT01001306/Centricity/Domain/73/Learning%20Distinctions%20Between%20High%20Achievers%20and%20Gifted.pdf

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