Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Gifted elementary in Manhattan requirements

Since people asked, I thought I would start a new thread since I have more information.

Hunter College runs a gifted elementary school and gifted high school in Mnahattan.

I just asked a child psychologist, whose child made the second round, which SB test it was and she didn't know. It is a Stanford Binet. They have a cutoff percentile. Last year it was 97th, this year 98th. They are hoping to only get 200 kids for the second round.

Here are the stats. Also relevant to an article about gender ratios.

1800 asked for the application, 1660 filled it out. 286 made the second round of achieving 98th percentile. 272 made appts. The ratio is 5:4 girls to boys.

In the second round, it is 2 hours long, they evaluate them for what they call true giftedness. I guess that is suppose to take out "hot house" kids. What is a hot house kid?

They look for kids that ask Why? Are highly interested in information. Does anyone's kid get deeply into a topic at 3 or 4 that they wanted to know everything about it? I am not sure how they research a topic. But I would be glad to hear any stories on this. I am curious to know what they would be looking for as I will go through this process next year.

What are the differences between "hot housed" kids and truly gifted, in your experience out there?

Ren

In a nutshell, I'd say self-motivation is the hallmark of GT kids, whereas hothoused kids are the ones whose parents are pushing.

The best example I know of hothousing in pop culture is from the Steve Martin movie "Parenthood." The Rick Moranis character is TOTALLY hothousing his little daughter in that movie.

Flashcards, rote memorization, pushy "stage parents"...these are the stuff of life for a hothoused kid.

An eager thirst for knowledge that the poor, exhausted parents can't keep up with...this is the life of a GT kid. They pick stuff up that you don't know how they learned it. They remember something you told them once months earlier when you thought they weren't paying attention. Essentially, the GT kids drive the learning bus and the parents hang on for dear life, not the other way around.

P.S. There was a lengthy, very active thread about this very topic a couple/few months ago. You might get something out of it if you can search for it, maybe? (I'm too lazy to search for it myself, I confess!)

We have friends whose kids went to Hunter from elementary on. They loved it. Good luck!

Hi Ren,
Here's the link to the topic, one of my favorites:
*** Link no longer working ***

Hi Questions!

Grinity

Thanks for the link. I understand the push with flash cards. But aren't a lot of kids "hot housed" now before that stage with Baby Einstein. I mean they know their instruments by 14 months because of Baby Einstein orchestra. When we were in Toronto, we went to the zoo a lot because it was easy, (it opened at 9 am) and we really enjoyed it, but at a year and a half, she knew the difference and names of 60 or 70 animals. It wasn't intentional. So isn't lifestyle creating hot housed kids?

And what about all those things that increase IQ ten points? Breast feeding, DHA, etc, etc. And then one year of music lessons increases IQ 8 points in older kids.

And China is supposedly taking hot housing to a whole new level. I saw a news segment on a preschool program. 10 million kids in those programs.

I think it is getting harder to define what is nature and nurture for brain development sometimes.

Ren

Ren,

I'm sure you've heard stories in NYC about parents who go to extremes for private school admission. As I understand it, there are test prep experts for the very young hoping to gain admission to the elite private schools. I don't think Hunter is going to be concerned about your exposing your daughter to the ballet, the zoo, or whatever, as long as they see ability and interest, not just rote skills under pressure. My friends' kids are already in high school and college, so I have no info on current testing procedures. If I find out, I'll let you know, but I don't think you have to be concerned about preparing for the evaluation.

All the best!

Questions

ps - Hi, Grinity - realized I do have to work, and have cut back on my posting...

Me again. Read the link on hothousing. It is a difficult thing. I can understand if you are yelling at your kid, you are going to learn the alphabet before you are 2 or you don't get ice cream.

I am grateful that Wila is smart and curious and wants to learn. There are times she doesn't. Then there are times she is spelling words on the fridge with the magnetic letters and asking how to spell something. Or counting and doing addition on her own.

But I did read to her for a couple of hours everyday when she was an infant, I got the Baby Einstein DVDs, I sang the Alphabet song with her and got all kinds of "Alphabet" books early on. And counting stories. You can't turn around in that section of Barnes & Nobles without hitting an Alphabet or Numbers book. So I think it is relative. Maybe if my child was not as smart and I had to push to want her to be where I see her classmates, maybe I would be that crazy.

I was a chaperone for a field trip to Carnegie Hall. I had my DD and another little boy's hand. As we were walking up the stairs of the subway, I suggested counting. The little boy couldn't count past 10. First I was shocked, he is 4. Then last week I was with another mother and we were heading to the library for a puppet show. There was counting going on and the mother was telling how the little girl counted to 23 that morning. I have learned not to say anything, like when a friend whose son is in kindergarten and learning to read and I piped up and said DD is reading the early readers also, I got silence. You all know about that. But if I was that mother and I was with another mother and they said yes, my daughter quickly learned to count past 100 when she got the base ten concept down, I would probably be doing a lot of hot housing wondering why my kid wasn't.

Just joking.

Ren

I am no expert but to me the difference between a truly gifted child and a hot housed learner is that the gifted child is always at least 1 step ahead of where the caregivers are expecting (usually many, many more :)). The hot housed child is learning at or just below the expectations of the caregiver.

Opportunity will always allow a child to learn things that another child may not know, which is one of the reasons that low income and minority gifted children so often fall through the cracks and get missed in early identification programs. However, it is what the child does with the knowledge that points to the difference between high average and gifted. For example: Does the child point to an animal and say elephant at 18 months or does the child look at you and ask why does the elphant have a built in shower?

A personal experience for us was during a trip to the Aquarium when he was 3. Our son was facinated with trying to identify as many of the fish as possible from the identification signs. He was sounding out latin names and seeing the similarities between different names and then looking at the fish to see if he could tell what made them different. Many parents looked at Dh and I like we were abusive parents as we stood at the same exhibit for close to an hour helping him to answer his own questions. Things didn't get ugly until we got the the reef exhibit. There were about 20 young children screaming NEMO!!!. Our child calmly looked in the tank and said " That's Marlin not Nemo. Nemo had a deformed fin. That fish doesn't." To me that is an example of gifted versus opportunity. It is the ability to not only learn but to make connections beyond what is expected or anticipated. The connections do not always have to be correct or valid. Often they can be a bit off the wall. But in my experience, most preschool age children do not watch a sting ray move and then compare it to how the sheets on his bed ripple when he waves them. And start talking about movement, momentum and air and water currents.

I think it is harder for schools to tell the difference between gifted and hot housed. If I remember Dottie's posts correctly, many of the tests for preschool age children CAN greatly inflate the results if a child already knows how to read or do simple math.

I'm glad I'm not one of the people who have to decide which of the applicants are going to be accepted and which are not!

I think the right think to say is "That's great. Can you count for me till 23?" or "What does he like to read?" Just be happy for them. I know it's hard not to talk about your daughter, but leave it for a different occasions. It will come up regardless. I remember my son who used to welcome people with chapter books and then proceeded to read them a chapter or two. It used to be quite shocking for the parents of his preschool friends

I don't think reading and being able to do math doesn't influence IQ tests. Achievement tests of course but there is no reading in PreK IQ testing or am I mistaken? All that said I remember reading articles about NYC and IQ preparation being offered. I am sure the kids can be prepared for the tests, but all that said I don't find it that surprising that there are so many of them. 98% is not that hight, that's 1 out of 50.
Manhattan has lots of well educated residents and lots of them are gifted and likely to have gifted children, with the price of private schools it's not surprising that people are trying to get their kids to Hunter if possible.

You are really lucky that NYC offers so many gifted programs for their residents. It's sad that the same thing is not applied to the rest of the Tri-state area. BTW why one does have to live only in Manhattan to get to Hunter? Why dont' they include other parts of NYC or suburbs?