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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's very hard to prep for the Cogat and the big secret is those expensive classes really do not really help kids get in anywhere. Very few kids from those prep schools actually get in and they would have gotten in anyway.

The only thing I think they offer is giving kids familiarity with the types of questions and format and you can do that for your child with a $10 book on Amazon or by borrowing a book which is available at the public library for free. There are also plenty of YouTube videos you can find online.

You are foolish if you think these actually make a difference.[/quote]

Actually it isn't hard to prep for it at all. It's not much different than prepping for the SATs. [b]You can boost your score by 20% [/b]simply by being familiar with the test format and question types. [b]These are well known facts.[/b][/quote]

I call B.S.!  I think every HS parent would be thrilled if their kids could improve 20% on their SAT's (let alone CogAT's, which don't count for college admission).  Maybe if they're at the bottom of the scale, I could see that happening but there is NO WAY that's true above the 50th percentile.

Go ahead - post the link with you proof.  Come on.  I want to see it.[/quote]

Wouldn't that be something if you could raise your IQ just by doing that but really you can't do very much. It's a well documented fact that you can Google in the academic literature that you can't prep for those tests because it would defeat the whole purpose of them. I do think that if you're a bad test taker or have low processing speed prepping might help you get through more questions but it does not magically give you the ability to solve puzzles and rotate shapes in your head.

[/quote]
Please don't fool other people into a sense of helplessness, of course prepping for anything involving logic and reasoning will help tremendously. All the above tests are highly preppable. Kids can learn a lot of logic, deductive, spatial reasoning, etc, skills by simply practicing thinking about those types of problems. They can do this because the human brain is effectively a pattern matching machine. Incidentally, IQ tests are also preppable, but pointless since IQ is a meaningless concept and there are no large incentives given out for trying to ace an IQ test. The way one preps is of course important, but in most cases even with average quality prep and average amount of time spent studying/thinking, many kids will improve a lot. In the upper echelons kids can effectively ace the 'IQ' tests, just like top math contest winners prepped their way into being able to solve very difficult problems that can seem ingenious to even the average math professor. All these tests simply contain a wide variety of puzzles, that's all. Someone who trains by solving many of these types of puzzles will do very well, it's simply the nature of how our human brains are wired to learn through practice.[/quote]

Huh?  What a lot of.. hmm.. the fact that you don't know the difference between an IQ test and the CogAT says everything.

"An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardized tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence."

"There are a variety of individually administered IQ tests in use in the English-speaking world.[75][76] The most commonly used individual IQ test series is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) for adults and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) for school-age test-takers. Other commonly used individual IQ tests (some of which do not label their standard scores as "IQ" scores) include the current versions of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, the Cognitive Assessment System, and the Differential Ability Scales."

"IQ tests that measure intelligence also include:
Raven's Progressive Matrices
Cattell Culture Fair III
Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales
Thurstone's Primary Mental Abilities[77][78]
Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test[79]
Multidimensional Aptitude Battery II
Das–Naglieri cognitive assessment system
Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test
Wide Range Intelligence Test"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

"[CogAT] assess students' acquired reasoning abilities"

"The CogAT is one of several tests used in the United States to help teachers or other school staff make student placement decisions for gifted education programs, and is accepted for admission to Intertel, a high IQ society for those who score at or above the 99th percentile on a test of intelligence."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Abilities_Test

Neither method is currently used to select MCPS Magnet students by this MC BoE or MCPS administration.[/quote]

That's a little misleading since the CogAT was used for selection up until the pandemic and was only suspended when its makers refused to let MCPS administer it remotely. At this point MCPS decided to use this as an opportunity to evaluate its usefulness. It could be reinstated once the current trial ends. No statement has been made but we should find out this Spring. Although I believe the CogAT is a fine test, I suspect it won't tell them anything they don't already know about their students.[/quote]

DP. Just fyi, it was only used a couple years, I think. MCPS used to have its own magnet test. It was pretty good. (But also susceptible to prep programs by Dr. Li and A++)[/quote]

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