My DC did a CTY summer camp in middle school. Took the SAT in 7th grade to qualify and as a PP noted he was "identified" because he'd scored over 95% on 6th grade ERBs. Quite a few kids in his private school class also were identified, took the SATs and at least 4 went to CTY camp that same summer. It was a 3 week residential camp. He really enjoyed it and it was a good experience both academically and socially. We've never done anything with CTY since (except as a pp noted we do get the fundraising calls). I'd say DC is smart but certainly not off the charts smart, same goes for the other kids in the class who did CTY camps. I don't think any of them really required challenges and enrichment, but all enjoyed the summer program. One of the reasons we chose it was to encourage the academic side - DS is a talented athlete and we wanted to make sure that sports weren't too much of a focus.

Does Hopkins still offer early admissions for kids who score high on the SATs? My brother went to Hopkins at 14 skipping high school and was among a group of kids who started college at 14, 15, 16 yrs old. As a group they did well as I recall; my brother graduated from Hopkins in three yrs.

They were basically math whizzes - all had 800 SATs or near perfect, with verbal scores in the 700 when they were 12. This was in the 80ties prior to CTY.

I don't think mentioning CTY would be a plus for Hopkins admissions. It's a pretty decentralized university, so CTY is its own thing, and I bet they get tons is apps from kids who apply in large part because of the CTY connection.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, the application process is costly and time-consuming IMO. Application fee is $37 and THEN you have to sign up with Prometric for $55 for the SCAT (my DC took it the summer between 2nd & 3rd grades). All of their programs are expensive, even the one-day family programs that are open to everyone. You must have deep pockets and a highly motivated child to do any of the online programs let alone the camps.
The reason we did it is because we thought it would provide a great opportunity for some additional enrichment. I should have checked the price tag!

I was disappointed in the program although to be fair we never signed uo for anything. All the programs seemed too expensive and to be blunt it seemed like it was great if your kid was really nerdy and had nothing else to do. We skipped it for our son who is probably the smartest of our 3 kids.

LOL! True. Like my kid needs to be encouraged to be more nerdy: Math olympiad, chess club, THIS... But even geeks need an outlet and it's very educational. Sigh. 8)

Wow. Thank you so much. My oldest (who is about to go to M.I.T.) benefited from the online classes that were not available at the middle school or high school. My second child is going to her fifth year of CTY camp and has made close friends who will probably be around for a long time, considering how much she texts and e-mails them. My youngest is going to CTY camp for the first time and can't wait! Only the oldest even moderately qualifies as a nerd, and if my eldest does, we are proud of it!

There are a number of things that annoy me about CTY. The administrative staff at the Baltimore office are slow at best and incompetent at worst. They constantly encourage you to enroll in this study that makes you fill our 20+ pages of info each year but offer no benefit to you whatsoever (COGITO, I think it's called). If you can pay full tuition for courses and camps, they are constantly shilling for scholarship money from you (which I understand to an extent, but the lengths they take it to are ridiculous).

Finally, and this is totally petty and personal on my part, my eldest got accepted to M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon. Columbia. Cornell, Northwestern, UC Berkeley. and Duke, among others. but did not get accepted to Johns Hopkins, despite the substantial amount of scholarship money we have given to the CTY program. Though my children have enjoyed the CTY programs, and my eldest mentioned CTY courses in the Johns Hopkins application, my eldest did not get accepted to Johns Hopkins.

A great big fuck you, Johns Hopkins. You will not see a cent of scholarship money for the CTY program from us again.

Congrats to your oldest! You can look at it another way, that taking those CTY courses helped get your child into all those other schools.

So how much $$$ do the camps and on line courses run?

FYI, Michael Bloomberg has been giving mega bucks to Hopkins his alma mater. The largest largesse to any university to date so I don't think they're hurting for donations.

my 10 yr old daughter is going to the Stanford summer program in about a month...i will let you know how it goes

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, the application process is costly and time-consuming IMO. Application fee is $37 and THEN you have to sign up with Prometric for $55 for the SCAT (my DC took it the summer between 2nd & 3rd grades). All of their programs are expensive, even the one-day family programs that are open to everyone. You must have deep pockets and a highly motivated child to do any of the online programs let alone the camps.
The reason we did it is because we thought it would provide a great opportunity for some additional enrichment. I should have checked the price tag!

I was disappointed in the program although to be fair we never signed uo for anything. All the programs seemed too expensive and to be blunt it seemed like it was great if your kid was really nerdy and had nothing else to do. We skipped it for our son who is probably the smartest of our 3 kids.

LOL! True. Like my kid needs to be encouraged to be more nerdy: Math olympiad, chess club, THIS... But even geeks need an outlet and it's very educational. Sigh. 8)

Wow. Thank you so much. My oldest (who is about to go to M.I.T.) benefited from the online classes that were not available at the middle school or high school. My second child is going to her fifth year of CTY camp and has made close friends who will probably be around for a long time, considering how much she texts and e-mails them. My youngest is going to CTY camp for the first time and can't wait! Only the oldest even moderately qualifies as a nerd, and if my eldest does, we are proud of it!

There are a number of things that annoy me about CTY. The administrative staff at the Baltimore office are slow at best and incompetent at worst. They constantly encourage you to enroll in this study that makes you fill our 20+ pages of info each year but offer no benefit to you whatsoever (COGITO, I think it's called). If you can pay full tuition for courses and camps, they are constantly shilling for scholarship money from you (which I understand to an extent, but the lengths they take it to are ridiculous).

Finally, and this is totally petty and personal on my part, my eldest got accepted to M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon. Columbia. Cornell, Northwestern, UC Berkeley. and Duke, among others. but did not get accepted to Johns Hopkins, despite the substantial amount of scholarship money we have given to the CTY program. Though my children have enjoyed the CTY programs, and my eldest mentioned CTY courses in the Johns Hopkins application, my eldest did not get accepted to Johns Hopkins.

A great big fuck you, Johns Hopkins. You will not see a cent of scholarship money for the CTY program from us again.

Ok I'm going to give it a shot, here--the overview for a PP who wanted to get their head around it.

On your school's standard, nationalized test, if your kid scores in the 95th percentile or above in any category, they are not eligible for CTY. They are only eligible to take the SCAT test. Their nationalized test serves only one function for CTY--to determine who is eligible to take the SCAT test.

The SCAT test is CTY's standardized test. It's divided into a verbal component and a quantitative component. All kids take both parts of the test, regardless of what category they scored in the 95th or above percentile on their nationalized test.

If your child scores high enough on either of those parts, they are now *eligible* for the CTY program. This is called "qualifying."

If they score high enough on the verbal, they qualify for CTY's verbal-type courses (like history and writing) and if they score high enough on the quantitative, they qualify to take math/science courses. And if they score high enough on both, they can take both types of courses.

So there are online courses that can be taken during school, and there are also three-week long summer courses that are day camps for younger kids, and sleep-away camps for older kids.

(Their website is very non-intutitve, imo--difficult to navigate and has some jargon.)

So, now for my example. Unlike a PP's kid who developed early and seems clearly gifted, my kids are no geniuses. They are not gifted kids, in my opinion. They are smart, well-rounded kids who like to learn. So I thought, well, let's give the SCAT a try and see what happens. Turns out they qualified, so then I thought, well, let's give a summer course a try and see if they like it.

I like the idea that they would be with other kids who are really excited about learning--just a bunch of kids infecting each other with their interest in the subject matter. I want to steer my kids toward being fascinated with ancient history or the scientific method vs. the latest fashion craze, so want to help that happen by putting them in an environment that facilitates that outcome.

As for us, I am smart but no genius either--I did well in my life because I'm a hard worker--but I like to learn, and want my kids to love learning. DH is one of those guys who you might say is super-smart but can't find his keys, or wallet, etc...every day. Remember Cary Grant as the scientist...well, you get the idea. If you met us, you'd think we were pretty normal, and our kids were pretty normal, nice, athletic.

So I hope that helps get your head around what CTY is and its process, and who enrolls their kids in it.

What's the cost of summer camp? Interested for 2nd grade for next yr since it's always good to have more options. Are the camps grouped by age?