Hi! I've posted intermittently on this forum about my daughter since she was two. I finally bit the bullet with testing (she's six, almost seven) and I got her WISC V score report back with a FSIQ of 149. So...she qualifies for DYS! I'm relieved because she's so underchallenged. Our district has no gifted program. Now I'm worrying about the application!

I was looking at the DYS application and I have strong answers for the Discussion Questions (I kept a detailed journal) but I'm not too sure about a Nominator because my daughter's young. Who have people used in this age range? Her first grade teacher loves her, and knows she's smart, but doesn't realize she's as bright as she actually is. My daughter's a very social girl who's already doing some ability hiding (and hiding interests she's figured out aren't popular with peers).

Other ideas: I have a doctor friend (pediatrics) who pulled me aside when my daughter was a toddler to tell me she was very gifted (but doesn't have any academic interactions with her). I also have another friend who's a high school guidance counselor, used to writing recommendations, around kids a lot, has interacted with my daughter a lot and knows how bright she is (could speak well to advanced abilities but no direct academic experience with her). My daughter's also done an accelerated science class through the university last summer for three weeks which she loved but I haven't kept in contact with the teachers. She's going to do the same program again in July with a different teacher, who I might be able to ask for a recommendation. Any advice on who you would pick? How important is picking a good Nominator? Thank you so much!!

Not to downplay the recommendation, but if the scores are solidly qualifying, it seems like the recommendation just needs to be completed. We used teachers who we believed understood our kiddos for both DYS. Both kiddos, however, have solidly qualifying scores.

Just pick someone who is likely to be supportive.

Best of luck!

Congrats on the DYS qualifying score! That's exciting .

We asked my DS7's piano teacher as the nominator. DS7 started taking piano lessons with him since he was just shy of 5 and has seen his gifted sides beside music. So he was more qualified than his school teachers. DS7 was accepted despite the fact that the piano teacher did not have too much to say on academic experience.

Good luck!

Ditto.

Ours never touched on acedemics either, but touched on what they saw as exceptional gifted qualities in other areas.

OP..
Pick the person who who can attest to her exceptional intellect. Qualifying test scores take care of the academic areas and speak for themselves.

We had DD's OT do it. She wrote a lovely letter with a really good example of DD being academically advanced, even though she was not actually doing academics with DD. (She has given us the name of a book that she said she usually recommends for older kids than DD was at the time, and by the time DD came back the following week, she had read the whole book, taken many of the quizzes, and had questions about the material to ask the OT.)

This is so helpful-- thank you all for the examples. I'm really excited about the scores (and kind of overwhelmed . My daughter's scores are solidly qualifying, since she had 155 for both the Verbal Comprehension and Fluid Reasoning Indices, so she could have qualified under that as well from my reading of things. I'll think a little more about the Nominator, but work on getting the application in. Thank you all so much!

My son was young when he got qualifying scores too. The Diretor of his preschool was his nominator.

Congrats to your daughter! DYS has been a great help to us.