Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment CTY SET program to close

Only the last SAT version is accepted (which can no longer be taken)

Seems As though this worthy program is on its way to being canned

The SET eligibility site says
which suggests to me that they will continue to use the SAT to qualify students in the future, perhaps with a cutoff other than 700.

From your lips to God's ears!

I expect the cutoff will be higher because from what I have seen of the sample tests the Advanced (sic) Maths used is trivial: simple ratio problems based in intuitive Geometry and a basic knowledge of Trig ratios. It is as though the new SAT's content has gone metric and is 1mm deep and 1km wide.

I just would like to see what that cutoff will be because its announcement will indicate that SET has a future. Basically, an entire year's cohort may miss the SET boat if CTY continue to dilly dally without offering reasonable alternatives beyond next January.

For those parents with children in this window, it seems to me the practical step would be to have them take the SAT anyway, and then submit scores whenever the criteria are released.

My son in 7th grade took the old and new SAT and got the exact same SAT math score. He did really well also on the new verbal SAT- he said the old verbal SAT had too much reading and he didn't bother to answer most of the questions since we were only interested in the math score anyway.

Indeed.

I am reluctant to put my DD who will just have turned 12 2 days prior through the lengthy test if she has no hope of 'qualifying'. She scored a 690 on the first practice 'benchmark' test when totally cold - had no prep whatsoever and hadn't even looked at a Maths book for weeks. But a) I don't know whether the CB tests are that representative of the real test and b) what she needs to score to get into SET, THINK etc. So I don't know how far she needs to 'reach' from that first baseline. I think it would be extremely discouraging to go through the hassle of the test without getting a reward like cooler summer camps etc and her age.

Still vacillating...

I wondered about this despite the website info since the new SAT is similar to the ACT and SET had never accepted use of the ACT.

NUMATS has set their new SAT minimum scores roughly based on the concordance tables. For 7th graders, you would need a 36 versus a 670 in CR and a 760 versus 730 for math. The EBRW score is the 10 times the sum of the reading and writing subscores. Anyhow, it looks like plus 50 points for CR and plus 30 points for math. Once you get near the top scores, the concordance would not make as much of a difference. For example, a 800 is still a 800.

Anyhow, if SET uses the CB concordance, then you would need a 730 in math and a 37(out of 40 so 740 on a 800 scale) in CR. However, I noticed that in DS and DD's CTY account, the CR score is not reported, only the EBRW score which includes the writing.

As for your DD, it depends on why she scored 690. Is it because she hasn't cover much of the material or because she was too slow or because she was too careless? By the way, you should really take a look at all the practice tests because the difficulty varies considerably although the different curves are supposed to adjust for the final scale score. Each of my two kids took two practice tests and one was a lot harder than the other.

Some of the material was completely alien to her, she hadn't studied for it and she doesn't have experience with this kind of test so she ran out of time.

Given that she hadn't prepped at all - just returned home after a 3 week CTY camp, I expect her to do much better than that on the real test because she will have done the Khan stuff online and have refined her exam technique by 4 months time.

I am loathe to put her through it if I am just setting her up for 'failure' though.

DW has her eye in a scholarship for girls too - I just want a summer camp that she will enjoy and stretch her a bit...

Perhaps you may want to reframe the opportunity so that failure won't be a possible outcome? It really is too much stress if your DD has to worry about failure. I would also not turn preparation into an arduous time consuming experience, just enough exposure so that she will be comfortable on test day. If you are aiming mainly for math, know that the curve is really generous (at least from around 650 to 790) compared to the old SAT. This means that she can miss or skip quite a few more math questions and still meet the SET minimum (whether it's 700 or 730 or some other similar number). Nevertheless, I recommend doing a quick review of the advanced topics chapter (DS took maybe a half hour) to eliminate the questions she can't answer. You are right that the test isn't "hard" but it is very much about efficient multi-step problem solving under time constraints. For instance, DS would likely even have been able to figure out the few topics/terminology that he hasn't seen before if he had time to reason it out. There is no time during the test to mentally explore and learn. By having DS look over the advanced topics, he was able to answer every question. On the other hand, if you are only looking for a SET level score, you can achieve that without the advanced topics. DD was not aiming for SET but she was surprisingly not that far off with just half of Algebra I under her belt. I think she likely would have hit around 700 after completing Algebra I. That seem to be the math needed to hit 700 for DS a couple of years back; I heard that was also the case for a number of other kids, at least on the old SAT. With Geometry and Algebra II, all the problems should be within reach.

I was at the Grand Ceremony this weekend, and was directed to email the support staff when I asked about a new score cutoff for the SET program (which I have done). They recognized SET students, and discussed the program history, so it certainly didn't seem that it was coming to an end.

Any reason to state that it's "to close" other than what appears to be a huge assumption? Especially given that it explicitly states that scores for the new tests will take some time to develop.

College Board's official concordance puts it at 730 - we'll see if CTY adopts that score.