DS just returned. Overall, a very disappointing experience and not worth the $4k it cost for 3 weeks. My kids found a better peer group and had more challenging work in a local theater camp!

Details: The CTY camp is huge -- 250 kids -- and has an institutional feel. The dorms were run down. The biggest disappointments were the intellectual content and the peer culture. The teacher was a public school teacher. He seemed very tired, very low affect, and communicated very little excitement. The content of the class was not particularly high level by our standards: the kids produced research reports according to a rubric and were pitched at about a 6th grade public-school level. Not the "college level" experience promised. The peer culture was very lowbrow. Lots of minimally-supervised dorm time with the kids engaging in horseplay and catty gossip. No one spent any time reading outside class. Three dances with lots of boy-girl drama.

RA supervision was spotty. The RAs are just college kids and get very tired very quickly. The RA: student ratio is nominally 1:15 but the RAs are apparently allowed to leave after the kids are in bed, leaving the ratio 1:30. And of course nighttime is mischief time. A sick RA or low-energy RA also means the supervision is minimal. The RAs just didn't seem to "get" that supervision doesn't mean sitting in your room with headphones on till some kid comes and finds you!

We have, by contrast, been fairly happy with CTY online math classes.

Some of these problems may be specific to the location my son attended. But I wish I'd known these facts before I signed up. I would have (i) asked about teacher qualifications and past teacher ratings from CTY participants (I don't think they let us rate the teachers, but they should) and (iii) asked about RA qualifications and arrangements for breaks and supervision of the RAs.

Sounds disappointing. Glad the local theater camp is a good fit.

Reminds me to report in: My DS16 just returned from Lancaster campus of CTY:Intensive Studies for grades 7 and above. I've heard that the Lancaster is particularly good for kids who are HG and PG. I can't speak to the supervision, but DS mostly loves it for the social experience. He did find his class in Physics Special Relativity to be very challenging. I think it varies by campus, and by teacher. You might consider THINK or MathPath for next year. Those programs are definitely more selective and more challenging academically.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Wow. What a bummer.

Are you going to send a letter to CTY? I would encourage you to write to them, if only so that they can address the problems.

Yes, that is indeed very unfortunate. Would definitely write in to CTY so that they can address. My D had attended the CTY 5-6 program at Stanford few years ago and had a very positive experience, and we were very impressed with the teacher and her assistant when we met for conference. D went to Lancaster this past summer and also loved that experience, including the instructor and fellow students. Sounded like her course (Prob & Game Theory) was quite rigorous enough.

I thought I would just add that my DD14 attended CTY Intensive Studies for grades 7 and above in Seattle this year and LOVED IT!!!

She is planning on Lancaster next year!

My oldest did a camp through our local talent search (not CTY) when she was just finishing up 4th grade, if I recall correctly, and while some of what you wrote wasn't the case where she was, we too felt that the level of the academics weren't what we were hoping for. To be fair, we've felt that way about a lot of the gifted summer programs she's attended, including ones run through our local schools.

We've been much happier with the level of the academics when she's gone to summer programs run directly by universities for kids who are generally older than she and, like Grinity mentioned, programs that tended to draw HG-PG kids not just all varieties of gifted.

The CTY Camp was great for my 5th grader, but there is a bit of a trick. You don't want to take a class on something you already know a lot about because these are still meant to be introductory classes. So if your child's passion is ancient history and they read everything they can find on the subject, then it is likely not to be the best class. Instead, have them take engineering that they are intrigued by, but probably wouldn't pursue on their own. This gives them a chance to open their eyes to other subjects in a fun and faster pace than a school might allow.

I've noticed when people pursue their passions at CTY, they are often disappointed. But, when they try something new they seem happier. So, when dd took the class we followed an interest in life science...but side stepped over a bit to pursue a science not previously studied. The science also had a lab every day, which was a huge hit with dd.