First off, let me issue a disclaimer. I don't know anything about the WAIS test that your daughter took. Dottie is certainly in a better position to say what those scores indicate. My humble advice would be to go ahead with the application and let whatever be will be, provided that it doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to apply. You will always wonder if you don't apply if your DD could have been accepted, and will only have piece of mind if you go for it. We all go through some form of gifted denial around here, where we think that our child can not possible be as gifted as we think. She might surprise you quite a bit. Just try to relax and cast your cards to the wind.
My DS has only been tested on the WISC-IV, so I have no experience with the SB-V. But in general, I think that you can't really prep them for these tests. They measure something abstract, i.e. how they go about solving problems or seeing connections. It is not like an achievement tests where they will be penalized if they haven't seen long division before. So just make sure that she has had a good night sleep and a healthy breakfast. Some people may talk to their child about how to give lengthy answers to the questions, or at least not to be afraid of talking about a question in some detail. I didn't do anything like that with my son. I was fearful that if I tried to tell him any strategies, then he would start to over-think his answers. So I just pretended that it was all a big, fun, game that he was playing.
Also, with your DD's scores, she looks to have a high ability on the perceptional reasoning section. You might inquire whether you DD can get entrance to the school with one score at the 99% level, or if it has to be a FSIQ at the 99% level. (Oh, I see Dottie already mentioned this!) And does the gifted school pay for having the SB-V testing done? If they do the testing for you for free, then it would be worth it to have the results. (I'm probably being very naive here!
) But with those test results in hand, you may be in a better place to go back to your DD's original school and get some changes made? Just a thought? You may get something positive out of applying for the school, even if you don't get in?
FWIW, a 2.5 hour pullout weekly for gifted instruction sounds heavenly to me. My son gets less than 30 minutes per week! Just to keep things in perspective!
