My thought was that the person who posted this is crazy and bitter. Are you the same OP that has been complaining about one Chinese kid and one Indian kid getting in at your school and claiming discrimination against your white kid? The school had no role in the admissions process who whatever volunteering the father did had no influence. Who cares if the girl does Kumon, Mathnasium? There are a lot of kids in my child's school who do them and I don't know a single one that got into the CES or a MS magnet.

Cogat prep can only do so much. It's really no different than Googling and having your child try sample problems. It can make kids who are smart and with potential look slightly better than they might have otherwise but it will not take a kid who is in the 80th percentile and suddenly make her a 99th percentile kid.

It sounds like want to blame someone four child getting rejected. It comes around to you. You seem educated and certainly know about all these afterschooling programs and value the magnet program. You should have put your child in them like the dad you described did. His DD deserves to get in for all the work she put in. Not yours.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I have two in MCPS. One went through HGC several years ago. You really think it's only one person who thinks the "peer cohort" is nonsense? I don't live in a w cluster either.

DP. I was hoping that it was only one poster who keeps posting, "MCPS lowered the admissions standards in order to admit poor kids, black kids, and Hispanic kids! If they published the scores, that would prove it, so they're not publishing the scores!" But maybe not.

You can hope, but it's not true. And it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with what a test-in magnet program is supposed to be about and not being fair to kids who happen to have a "cohort", which does nothing if the curriculum is slow and unchallenging.

I'm so thankful that my DC went through HGC before this cohort nonsense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
NP. +1, PP. Sometimes true.

A girl from our school - from a first-generation immigrant Chinese family - got accepted. Her father has literally lived at our school starting from K (I guess his government job gave him this ample opportunity), volunteering for every single event and knowing everyone and everybody. He micromanaged his kid education down to the selection of books she read. He was hanging out in class every Friday. And, of course, for the girl, there were Kumons, Mathnasiums, and, the culmination of it all, A plus with the entire fall semester worth of Cogat prep.

Honestly, I have seriously mixed feelings about this. That girl is not a genius, not even close (as fate would have it, she used to be good friends with my child, until intense test-prep put too many demands on her schedule), but the sheer amount of determination/time/money/effort and opportunity cost that went into this girl's admission makes me think, hey, that dad did it. Mission accomplished, and, in some twisted way, it is fair.

However, this has nothing to do with 'gifts' and 'talents', this is outright cramming on the part of the child coupled with curry favoring on the part of the parent.

PP, you are way up in this child's business. Which means, additionally, that you know that the costs of this approach may very well far outweigh the benefit of admission into a CES.

+1 My first and only thought was "poor kid."

Anonymous wrote:
NP. +1, PP. Sometimes true.

A girl from our school - from a first-generation immigrant Chinese family - got accepted. Her father has literally lived at our school starting from K (I guess his government job gave him this ample opportunity), volunteering for every single event and knowing everyone and everybody. He micromanaged his kid education down to the selection of books she read. He was hanging out in class every Friday. And, of course, for the girl, there were Kumons, Mathnasiums, and, the culmination of it all, A plus with the entire fall semester worth of Cogat prep.

Honestly, I have seriously mixed feelings about this. That girl is not a genius, not even close (as fate would have it, she used to be good friends with my child, until intense test-prep put too many demands on her schedule), but the sheer amount of determination/time/money/effort and opportunity cost that went into this girl's admission makes me think, hey, that dad did it. Mission accomplished, and, in some twisted way, it is fair.

However, this has nothing to do with 'gifts' and 'talents', this is outright cramming on the part of the child coupled with curry favoring on the part of the parent.

PP, you are way up in this child's business. Which means, additionally, that you know that the costs of this approach may very well far outweigh the benefit of admission into a CES.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There is no school in MCPS that sent zero kids to a CES.

THIS is exactly why the whole "cohort of peers" is a complete and total lie by MCPS. If it were true that they were only taking out kids who are total outliers at their schools, then there would be schools with zero kids at the CES. Surely, there are many schools with a group of 3, 5, or even 8 kids who are fairly evenly talented academically. Or schools without ANYONE who qualifies to be within the top 3% of the county. But still, one or two from each school get selected for CES and the others are SOL at their home school, stuck doing the same worksheets and craft projects as the other kids.

It is not true.
PP, you truly are stuck in an alternate reality. It is sometimes true, and one of several factors MCPS used in the process.

NP. +1, PP. Sometimes true.

A girl from our school - from a first-generation immigrant Chinese family - got accepted. Her father has literally lived at our school starting from K (I guess his government job gave him this ample opportunity), volunteering for every single event and knowing everyone and everybody. He micromanaged his kid education down to the selection of books she read. He was hanging out in class every Friday. And, of course, for the girl, there were Kumons, Mathnasiums, and, the culmination of it all, A plus with the entire fall semester worth of Cogat prep.

Honestly, I have seriously mixed feelings about this. That girl is not a genius, not even close (as fate would have it, she used to be good friends with my child, until intense test-prep put too many demands on her schedule), but the sheer amount of determination/time/money/effort and opportunity cost that went into this girl's admission makes me think, hey, that dad did it. Mission accomplished, and, in some twisted way, it is fair.

However, this has nothing to do with 'gifts' and 'talents', this is outright cramming on the part of the child coupled with curry favoring on the part of the parent.

Anonymous wrote:

There is no school in MCPS that sent zero kids to a CES.

THIS is exactly why the whole "cohort of peers" is a complete and total lie by MCPS. If it were true that they were only taking out kids who are total outliers at their schools, then there would be schools with zero kids at the CES. Surely, there are many schools with a group of 3, 5, or even 8 kids who are fairly evenly talented academically. Or schools without ANYONE who qualifies to be within the top 3% of the county. But still, one or two from each school get selected for CES and the others are SOL at their home school, stuck doing the same worksheets and craft projects as the other kids.

What are outliers in the data?

An outlier is an observation that lies an abnormal distance from other values in a random sample from a population. In a sense, this definition leaves it up to the analyst (or a consensus process) to decide what will be considered abnormal. Before abnormal observations can be singled out, it is necessary to characterize normal observations.

https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/prc/section1/prc16.htm

Anonymous wrote:

There is no school in MCPS that sent zero kids to a CES.

THIS is exactly why the whole "cohort of peers" is a complete and total lie by MCPS. If it were true that they were only taking out kids who are total outliers at their schools, then there would be schools with zero kids at the CES. Surely, there are many schools with a group of 3, 5, or even 8 kids who are fairly evenly talented academically. Or schools without ANYONE who qualifies to be within the top 3% of the county. But still, one or two from each school get selected for CES and the others are SOL at their home school, stuck doing the same worksheets and craft projects as the other kids.

It is not true.
PP, you truly are stuck in an alternate reality. It is sometimes true, and one of several factors MCPS used in the process.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There is no school in MCPS that sent zero kids to a CES.

THIS is exactly why the whole "cohort of peers" is a complete and total lie by MCPS. If it were true that they were only taking out kids who are total outliers at their schools, then there would be schools with zero kids at the CES. Surely, there are many schools with a group of 3, 5, or even 8 kids who are fairly evenly talented academically. Or schools without ANYONE who qualifies to be within the top 3% of the county. But still, one or two from each school get selected for CES and the others are SOL at their home school, stuck doing the same worksheets and craft projects as the other kids.

god forbid...

These people are nuts.

Anonymous wrote:

There is no school in MCPS that sent zero kids to a CES.

THIS is exactly why the whole "cohort of peers" is a complete and total lie by MCPS. If it were true that they were only taking out kids who are total outliers at their schools, then there would be schools with zero kids at the CES. Surely, there are many schools with a group of 3, 5, or even 8 kids who are fairly evenly talented academically. Or schools without ANYONE who qualifies to be within the top 3% of the county. But still, one or two from each school get selected for CES and the others are SOL at their home school, stuck doing the same worksheets and craft projects as the other kids.

god forbid...

There is no school in MCPS that sent zero kids to a CES.

THIS is exactly why the whole "cohort of peers" is a complete and total lie by MCPS. If it were true that they were only taking out kids who are total outliers at their schools, then there would be schools with zero kids at the CES. Surely, there are many schools with a group of 3, 5, or even 8 kids who are fairly evenly talented academically. Or schools without ANYONE who qualifies to be within the top 3% of the county. But still, one or two from each school get selected for CES and the others are SOL at their home school, stuck doing the same worksheets and craft projects as the other kids.

Our DC had exactly the same scores on the CogAt as the OP: 24, 17, 15 or 56/64 total. DC was accepted.

To the OP: I wouldn't think of that score on the figure matrices on sinking your child in any way, seriously. Only the percentiles were reported so how could it? (From the discussion on another thread and info gained elsewhere, it looks like this section of the test is the most unfamiliar to the kids and on top of that the least indicative of how a child will do in school (or specifically advanced/accelerated programs). It is a nonverbal test that is attempting to get at pattern recognition and intelligence that can be "hidden" in students that are testing in a second language they are not yet fully fluent in.

Everything that the MCPS has said is that the percentiles for the total screener only. It seems like the 99th percentile range is very large based on what has been listed here. At least 53-64

Really points to the the other measures being (necessarily) just as important as CogAt. The CogAT screener is not enough to narrow the pool sufficiently for this program with it's limited seats.

MAP scores, Report Cards, and Reading Level (as indicated on report cards) seem to have had a larger weight than they did when the full CogAt was used in years past.


This doesn't necessarily entail a dumbing down, as I keep hearing brought up on this site. How are the other indicators not valid?

I don't know what motivated the decision not to do the full CogAt anymore. I can imagine expense and trying to not freak out kids who wouldn't be up to talking a LONG test could both be factors. But once they made the decision to not do the full CogAt, I can't imagine MCPS not needing to give other indicators more weight. Simply too many kids would perform at 99th percentile (or near it) on the screener.

Seems there are two...
-angry “peer cohort” who wants scores published to prove that MCPS didn’t lower CoGAT admissions standards to accept unworthy poor brown kids.
-enraged “peerless outlier” who cannot/will not get over the fact that her child was not accepted and that kids who prepped did.

I do hope there are only two.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I have two in MCPS. One went through HGC several years ago. You really think it's only one person who thinks the "peer cohort" is nonsense? I don't live in a w cluster either.

DP. I was hoping that it was only one poster who keeps posting, "MCPS lowered the admissions standards in order to admit poor kids, black kids, and Hispanic kids! If they published the scores, that would prove it, so they're not publishing the scores!" But maybe not.

There are things MCPS did that make people wonder what they are trying to hide. Not using the full Cogat only the screener, stop publishing the accepted median scores. These were the controversial changes. Universal testing, not using teacher nomination/recommendation, not using parental essays/outside activities, these were changes most people applauded.

Anonymous wrote:53/64, 99%, CES rejected.

I wonder what is the lower bound is 99%. 53/64 and 64/64 seem to be pretty different. If the selection committee didn't have access to the raw score, I can see how a really high score kids get rejected over someone with lower scores.

Anonymous wrote:
I have two in MCPS. One went through HGC several years ago. You really think it's only one person who thinks the "peer cohort" is nonsense? I don't live in a w cluster either.

DP. I was hoping that it was only one poster who keeps posting, "MCPS lowered the admissions standards in order to admit poor kids, black kids, and Hispanic kids! If they published the scores, that would prove it, so they're not publishing the scores!" But maybe not.