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.
