Reply to Gifted kid - APS, FCPS, or Nysmith?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our exceptionally gifted kid went through APS and did fine, but really blossomed in high school at TJ.

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This is really the answer. TJ was a huge shock for my highly gifted kid. Because he wasn’t the smartest kid in the room.  By a long shot. And he finally had to work.  And work. And work.  It was really humbling for him.  He went through a FCPS TJ feeder MS and that was definately a step up from ES, where he was LLIV.

I think the answer OP is FCPS AAP.  But if you have a choice,[b] one of the “good” ES Centers that feeds into Carson, Rocky Run or Longfellow, which are the TJ feeder MSs.[/b] Because that is where parents of very smart kids who care a lot about academics send their kids. So your DC is more likely to find kids who have the same interests and are his academic peers, and to find good extracurricular FLL, OOTM, Science Olympiad, etc teams, coding clubs etc.  The kids at TJ with DS?  Pretty much the kids you looked at in third grade while they explained the science behind how we know what color feathers the dinosaurs had and said— that kid is going to end up at TJ.

I don’t know enough about APS to say yeah or nay, but O do think stand-alone FT GT education is a good model, even if it is GT lite.  The APS kids at TJ seem to be prepared and do very well.

I have watched Nysmith at various academic competitions for years, and their kids never seem to do that well, or come across as that impressive. I would definately not pay to send a kid there, when that kid could go to Carson AAP — literally across the street— for free.

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That might make sense if your kid is math/science focused.  Our kids with upper 140s-low 150s IQs did well in two different "run of the mill" AAP centers.  They were both extra accelerated in math (5th and 6th grade algebra) but have zero interest in coding, science olympiad, FLL etc. and were much more interested in reading, writing, acting, history.  Odyssey of the Mind is a good fit for those kids as is access to arts/acting programs.  The TJ focused culture of some of the "good" schools would have been a turn-off for both my kids--they responded well to the openness of their environments.[/quote]

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