Here is an excerpt from an email I received from the Davidson Academy. I think it is clear from this response that they are focusing their recruitment on students who are academically ready for advanced high school and college and not at the high ends of middle school or early high school.
"The Davidson Academy serves middle and high school level students who have test scores that are within the 99.9th percentile and are academically ready for a significantly advanced curriculum. The course work available to students, in most cases, is approximately three grade levels above what a student would experience if starting a typical middle school in the community. Therefore we do not have any classes that would equate to a classic middle school level, other than pre-algebra. Most course texts and materials are equivalent to advanced high school and college academics.
The application qualification criteria were reviewed and updated this past summer as we do every year. Updates are made based on the previous year�s application review period. Most importantly we found that we needed to update our qualification criteria to better target applicants who have the academic readiness in place to be successful as an Academy student.
