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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I am the "it's not all about practice" poster. I highly doubt you'd get an 11 year old to self-study the AoPS sequence if they did not have natural ability.  He can do as little or as much math as he wants to, and he self-checks the solutions, too, and has been doing that for a good year. Could we push him further? Of course we could!! But I know MIT is probably not going to be happening for a white upper middle class boy, so I prefer for him to keep the joy in math and learning than to force-feed competition math to make sure that he gets into the absolutely best college he could possibly get into. [/quote]

We've already established that only 16 elementary school kids in VA landed in the top 5% of AMC 8 last year.  So, your 6th grader with a 20 is in a select group.  ALL of the kids there have a strong mixture of passion for math, talent, hard work, and access to the right materials.  You don't rise to the top in anything without all of those factors in play, and it's impossible to quantify how much of the success is talent vs. the passion or hard work.

I'm a big believer that "gifted is as gifted does."  Your kid is achieving at a high level.  It shouldn't matter to what degree his success is due to "natural talent" vs. any other factors.  Whatever he's doing will carry him far.  Be happy.  Stop seeking some sort of validation that your kid is super gifted in math and instead celebrate his achievements.

The reason people are jumping on you is that you are being disingenuous about all of the other factors contributing to your child's success.  AoPS books are designed to teach problem solving skills and include many AMC problems from previous years.  Studying AoPS at all is a huge advantage for AMCs, even if your kid didn't specifically train on practice tests.  By minimizing your child's work and training from AoPS and emphasizing your child's "natural ability", you're basically insisting that your kid is much smarter than kids who didn't earn as high of a score.  [/quote]

Welcome to DCUM.  This is literally what happens in every thread in the AAP section - some parent has to come on here and tell us what a genius their kid is and how he/she never preps and they don't push him/her at all and they are just better than our kids and they are the best at everything.  Literally every thread.  Although, hats off to the parent of the 4th grader that made the top 5% of AMC 8.   [/quote]

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