I posted my reply to save for college. I am sure your DD bright and all that you say. But, just as a warning, here is what happened with a gifted kid in my family, not my own child, but very close kid. She was in a gifted program, everybody told her how smart she is, and she is, no doubt. She took it as a sign that if it is too hard it is impossible and developed a closed mind set, where she never made any effort and by middle school was failing and accusing teachers of being evil to her. She barely finished high school, no joke, one of those they "let" graduate. So, be careful about developing work and study habits for your child, talent and IQ will take you only so far, and I still wonder if nobody told the kid that she is all that, that maybe she would have taken school seriously. I know so many kids who are/were LD and developed work ethic to compensate and they are the ones doing good in college. Not saying at all, that this will happen to your child, just offering what I have seen happen.

Have not read all 7 pages, so apologies if this repeats what someone else has said, but: Do not ignore or undertreat the anxiety. In HS, even the highest-IQ kids run into courses and teachers that knock them off balance--perhaps due to workload or a subject that just doesn't come as easily as others--and that is when the kids with clinical levels of anxiety can go off the rails. They have developed no tolerance for being less-than-perfect or good skills for coping with distress. For a gifted kid with anxiety, those coping skills may be even more important than academic achievement. Don't assume all is okay just because the grades continue to be stellar, and make sure your kid knows that it's okay to screw up and that you love her regardless of her talent and achievement.

8yo DS here, profoundly gifted, FSIQ 147, Davidson Young Scholar. Highly recommend applying to Davidson Young Scholar, you get a great network of parents and family consultant who can guide you. FWIW, gifted kids have different quirks, very emotional, my son cries for very little nonissues atleast 6-8 times a week! Paranoid about natural disasters as well. A support structure is super helpful to get your questions answered. We enrich at home and he is in all advanced classes at school. He has a clear idea that he wants to pursue Computer Engineering and we support his goal by letting him work through Khan academy and other coding courses/books

Anonymous wrote:9yo DD here as well. Gifted but 2e, so profoundly gifted in some ways but not in others. Moreover, just a very academically oriented kid. Academics are her strength. She won't be well rounded. Her disability precludes her from excelling in sports or music. I have anxiety about her missing opportunities. Her biggest strength may just be doing well on the SAT at a young age.

I can't think of anything we should be doing now in preparation for college. She qualified for CTY, but it's too expensive to do anything. She reads at a high school level and will start algebra next year--though I'm not sure the point. We currently live abroad.

I am poster above. When my kids were in middle school, they were placed in high school classes for math, science and language. I regretted them taking the placement tests - they did not bond as well w their middle school classmates as they did not have many classes w them. So in retrospect, i wished they had taken advanced classes. School didn't even weigh the GPA - not only were they in advance classes but in the honors versions! Double whammy w no upside!

9yo DD here as well. Gifted but 2e, so profoundly gifted in some ways but not in others. Moreover, just a very academically oriented kid. Academics are her strength. She won't be well rounded. Her disability precludes her from excelling in sports or music. I have anxiety about her missing opportunities. Her biggest strength may just be doing well on the SAT at a young age.

I can't think of anything we should be doing now in preparation for college. She qualified for CTY, but it's too expensive to do anything. She reads at a high school level and will start algebra next year--though I'm not sure the point. We currently live abroad.

For what this is worth:
I have 2 DCs identified as PG based on one of the IQ tests and they enrolled in a school for the gifted. In 7th grade, I pulled them out and enrolled them in a private school which had more "well rounded" activities - where DCs had to participate in a sport every season, etc. THey were in advanced classes (which I regret) and just did activities other kids did. I resisted the urge to enroll them in the JH CTY or other gifted summer programs although school sent the application forms every spring. THey are now in college and doing quite well. And most importantly have a great social life with plenty of friends!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's important for you to realize there is nothing unique or remarkable about what you're describing and when she applies to college she will be competing against similarly gifted students for slots.

You are wrong. A kid who figures out how to read by age 3 is exceptional. Assuming (a) kid basically taught herself and (b) parent is accurate about kid being able to read (vs recite text from memory and recognize a few words). This is consistent with a subsequent identification as PG.

You must have little kids and not teens.

Giftedness and advanced intellectual skills are like an upside down pyramid. Very few in the early years and gradually increasing numbers of peers the farther they get into school. Hard work, drive, organization and quit wit can easily outpace giftedness by high school.

The kid who is reading at three can easily end up struggling by their teen years, for as simple of reasons as they can't remember to turn in homework like PPs kid, relied on a photographic memory until that party trick no longer worked in higher level AP classes like my kid, or feel they are above most mundane work like the offspring of the PP who said it is okay to not do work because so much of it is below gifted kids.

The kid may have an IQ in the highly or profoundly gifted range, but if they struggle.putting that skill to good use, then they will be passed up by many other bright and hardworking kids.

Don't count on scholarships OP.

As an example of one, my profoundly gifted kid who has always gotten straight As is now dancing with ending up with a C average for tenth grade, including subjects he loves. He hit a math level where he actually has to do homework regularly to do well and can no longer skate in and ace the test (he is on the advanced math track). He is struggling to learn that the best way to a good grade in upper level English class is to give the teacher what she wants to hear and see on your writing assignments instead of writing what you want to write, and by the way edits and revisions do matter, even if you have always been able to get As with your first drafts. And he is learning that AP classes are really, really supposed to challenge you if taught correctly.

Focus on your kid being a good student, vs being a "gifted" student. In the end, gifted kids are just kids. And gifted or not, a LOT can happen to the kid you thought you were raising between the years of 12-18.

Nope. DC is in colleage and I've also been the kid in this scenario. And you’re wrong about IQ, though arguably right about achievement in UMC environments. And I didn’t say anything about how being PG meant a kid would never struggle or always outperform non-PG kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No there aren’t 200 kids per grade in FCPS that have IQs > 175.

Wow that would be the highest recorded IQ

The thing is many tests saturate at the highest scores. #s are probably meaningless above about 150. if you use 99.9 as the basis, and use a scale with a 15 point standard deviation, by definition, you are just over three standard deviations above the mean. Or, just over 145.

175 is 5 standard deviations, or 330,000,000/ 1744278= 190 people in the US. But, you can't measure it as the tests can't scale that high.

Instead, you can look at lifetime results and the problems they can solve.

Really, anything about 140 is hard to measure. One question can mean 10 points; one extra second in a section can impact it.

The difference between scoring 160 and 140 can a distracting itch. (the key thing is scoring/measuring).

Years ago (around 1990), I was part of a study that looked at intelligence compared with different actions. My baseline is about 155. No sleep and it dropped to 130. Drunk and it dropped to 110...etc.

I didn't realize how hard it was to measure at the far end of the scale. Interesting! So what range do you think pg people are in if not 175+?

Back when my oldest tested PG was considered above three deviations, so 145+

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No there aren’t 200 kids per grade in FCPS that have IQs > 175.

Wow that would be the highest recorded IQ

The thing is many tests saturate at the highest scores. #s are probably meaningless above about 150. if you use 99.9 as the basis, and use a scale with a 15 point standard deviation, by definition, you are just over three standard deviations above the mean. Or, just over 145.

175 is 5 standard deviations, or 330,000,000/ 1744278= 190 people in the US. But, you can't measure it as the tests can't scale that high.

Instead, you can look at lifetime results and the problems they can solve.

Really, anything about 140 is hard to measure. One question can mean 10 points; one extra second in a section can impact it.

The difference between scoring 160 and 140 can a distracting itch. (the key thing is scoring/measuring).

Years ago (around 1990), I was part of a study that looked at intelligence compared with different actions. My baseline is about 155. No sleep and it dropped to 130. Drunk and it dropped to 110...etc.

I didn't realize how hard it was to measure at the far end of the scale. Interesting! So what range do you think pg people are in if not 175+?

Anyone who scores above 99% (140 or so) is potentially profoundly gifted, would be my guess. What happens above it is there are just not enough people to get a statistically valid number. Lets say you use 1000 people to normalize the IQ. 10 will be over 99%. 1 would be 99.9% Not enough people to get a good sampling. 90%, sure.

Just like with polls: when there is only 1 person in a demographic group, they can not say what the percentage of people in that group will vote.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually, moving to a state with an excellent public university system is a great idea if your work lives allow for it. As a pg kid, I really benefited from living in CA, with cheap and easy access to community college and UC classes and libraries from an early age.

Personally, I grew up with what others might call a strong work ethic but it wasn't really school-focused. School was a relatively low bar which I cleared easily and then got on with doing things that interested me. So I’d say I was responsible wrt schoolwork but the Energizer Bunny wrt my own interests/projects.

And what provided that energy was not a work ethic so much as curiosity and a delight in figuring things out. Basically, for a pg kid like me, school was not where most learning happened. Libraries mattered more. In some cases, extra curricular mattered more (speech and debate and math team, for me). Museums mattered. Films mattered. The newspaper mattered. The woods mattered. Even the kitchen mattered.

School is not that interesting, but the world is fascinating. And school can be a useful way of discovering (vs pursuing) interests and playmates/partners in crime (another advantage of living in a college town during MS and HS — it was easy to find kids who loved to read and think and talk and explore).

Ironic thing for me is when I had a kid of my own, I set out to find DC a more challenging school than the ones I attended. Big mistake. DC lost the free time I had and got used to a regime in which obligation, competition, triage, and stress dominated the school environment, and school became mostly where DC learned.

DC excelled in HS, got into a great Uni, and continues to do well in college, but DC’s work/play distinction is much sharper than mine and, as a result, there’s less drive and less joy. If I had to do it all over again, I’d send DC to public school for HS and provide more space and time for a choose your own adventure approach to intellectual life.

Unless you are exceptionally rich, California is one of the worst states to move to if you have a smart kid.

Except for a tiny handful of tye very wealthy areas, California schools are abismal now.

Neither my parents nor my brother are exceptionally rich (or even rich) and both live in SoCal districts with excellent public schools.

California schools are terrible. Good schools are the exception there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's important for you to realize there is nothing unique or remarkable about what you're describing and when she applies to college she will be competing against similarly gifted students for slots.

You are wrong. A kid who figures out how to read by age 3 is exceptional. Assuming (a) kid basically taught herself and (b) parent is accurate about kid being able to read (vs recite text from memory and recognize a few words). This is consistent with a subsequent identification as PG.

You must have little kids and not teens.

Giftedness and advanced intellectual skills are like an upside down pyramid. Very few in the early years and gradually increasing numbers of peers the farther they get into school. Hard work, drive, organization and quit wit can easily outpace giftedness by high school.

The kid who is reading at three can easily end up struggling by their teen years, for as simple of reasons as they can't remember to turn in homework like PPs kid, relied on a photographic memory until that party trick no longer worked in higher level AP classes like my kid, or feel they are above most mundane work like the offspring of the PP who said it is okay to not do work because so much of it is below gifted kids.

The kid may have an IQ in the highly or profoundly gifted range, but if they struggle.putting that skill to good use, then they will be passed up by many other bright and hardworking kids.

Don't count on scholarships OP.

As an example of one, my profoundly gifted kid who has always gotten straight As is now dancing with ending up with a C average for tenth grade, including subjects he loves. He hit a math level where he actually has to do homework regularly to do well and can no longer skate in and ace the test (he is on the advanced math track). He is struggling to learn that the best way to a good grade in upper level English class is to give the teacher what she wants to hear and see on your writing assignments instead of writing what you want to write, and by the way edits and revisions do matter, even if you have always been able to get As with your first drafts. And he is learning that AP classes are really, really supposed to challenge you if taught correctly.

Focus on your kid being a good student, vs being a "gifted" student. In the end, gifted kids are just kids. And gifted or not, a LOT can happen to the kid you thought you were raising between the years of 12-18.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No there aren’t 200 kids per grade in FCPS that have IQs > 175.

Wow that would be the highest recorded IQ

The thing is many tests saturate at the highest scores. #s are probably meaningless above about 150. if you use 99.9 as the basis, and use a scale with a 15 point standard deviation, by definition, you are just over three standard deviations above the mean. Or, just over 145.

175 is 5 standard deviations, or 330,000,000/ 1744278= 190 people in the US. But, you can't measure it as the tests can't scale that high.

Instead, you can look at lifetime results and the problems they can solve.

Really, anything about 140 is hard to measure. One question can mean 10 points; one extra second in a section can impact it.

The difference between scoring 160 and 140 can a distracting itch. (the key thing is scoring/measuring).

Years ago (around 1990), I was part of a study that looked at intelligence compared with different actions. My baseline is about 155. No sleep and it dropped to 130. Drunk and it dropped to 110...etc.

Stanford-Binet used to have a test that was designed to discriminate among the highly gifted (I was given it as a child in the early 1970s). But, as testing became a bigger industry, that component got dropped and it’s really outdated now (in a host of ways), though I think a few psychs still champion its use (or maybe just its utility).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No there aren’t 200 kids per grade in FCPS that have IQs > 175.

Wow that would be the highest recorded IQ

The thing is many tests saturate at the highest scores. #s are probably meaningless above about 150. if you use 99.9 as the basis, and use a scale with a 15 point standard deviation, by definition, you are just over three standard deviations above the mean. Or, just over 145.

175 is 5 standard deviations, or 330,000,000/ 1744278= 190 people in the US. But, you can't measure it as the tests can't scale that high.

Instead, you can look at lifetime results and the problems they can solve.

Really, anything about 140 is hard to measure. One question can mean 10 points; one extra second in a section can impact it.

The difference between scoring 160 and 140 can a distracting itch. (the key thing is scoring/measuring).

Years ago (around 1990), I was part of a study that looked at intelligence compared with different actions. My baseline is about 155. No sleep and it dropped to 130. Drunk and it dropped to 110...etc.

By the way this is what a psychologist told me - anything over 99% is really just splitting hairs.

Anonymous wrote:My DD is only 9 years old but by every indication is extremely gifted academically. She's recently been assessed as "profoundly gifted". This all very new for us so we are still trying to wrap our heads around it. She's only in third grade but for the first time, we started thinking about what college might look like for her.

We haven't yet saved very much for college (and we have three kids, the other two younger than our DD). My question is, if she has the academic profile (grades, test scores ect) to get into top-rated schools, is she likely to be eligible for a lot of merit-based aid? Or, if we are unable to pay for tuition at top schools will her choice be a less expensive and inferior state school or taking on massive student loans?

We are wondering what we can do at this point. Should we be thinking about moving to a state with excellent public universities? Besides trying to save as much as possible (which we are already doing) what can we do to make sure she gets the kind of education she, and our other kids, need and deserve?

Please excuse my ignorance and thanks in advance for any information or advice.

Consider moving to Europe or Asia, where academic excellence is still valued and pursued all the way to university -- which is often free or dirt cheap.

Then come back to the US for postgraduate studies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No there aren’t 200 kids per grade in FCPS that have IQs > 175.

Wow that would be the highest recorded IQ

The thing is many tests saturate at the highest scores. #s are probably meaningless above about 150. if you use 99.9 as the basis, and use a scale with a 15 point standard deviation, by definition, you are just over three standard deviations above the mean. Or, just over 145.

175 is 5 standard deviations, or 330,000,000/ 1744278= 190 people in the US. But, you can't measure it as the tests can't scale that high.

Instead, you can look at lifetime results and the problems they can solve.

Really, anything about 140 is hard to measure. One question can mean 10 points; one extra second in a section can impact it.

The difference between scoring 160 and 140 can a distracting itch. (the key thing is scoring/measuring).

Years ago (around 1990), I was part of a study that looked at intelligence compared with different actions. My baseline is about 155. No sleep and it dropped to 130. Drunk and it dropped to 110...etc.

I didn't realize how hard it was to measure at the far end of the scale. Interesting! So what range do you think pg people are in if not 175+?