It is great for 3rd graders that NUMATS just added 3rd graders on award ceremony this year. DS10 took the test when he was in 3rd grade. He did it well, but a bit disappointed because no ceremony for him. Overall, It was a nice experience. The proctor at Northwestern test site insisted to give DS a calculator. While he never used a calculator at that time, he just used it as a new toy in the math test. He told me after the test that he spent a few minutes figuring out how to use it and checked all the answers with the "new toy". The side effect obviously was that he did not have enough time to finish all 25 questions. So the first thing I did that day was buying DS a calculator, so he won't be confused again.
Even it was a 3-hour long test (8:30 to 11:30ish, with one 15 minutes snack break), it is not that scary after all. We did not have any prep, not even the sample test. According to DS, math was not difficult, he finished 20 question, and got all of them correct (double checked with calculator ofcourse
). No middle school knowledge (pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, count and probability etc.) needed. DS also aced all 25 questions in Science, so I assumed that it is not that difficult. DS said he did not get some of the vocabularies in Reading, so that could be at middle school level.
DS took two more Explore tests since then in 4th & 5th grade. We just treat it as benchmark test for DS' improvement. Once he grows out of it, we move on to ACT/SAT. Even though the report card was sent to school every year. It had no impact at all. GT teacher has no clue what the percentile really tells. She did not even realize that a 70 percentile was actually among the top 2-5% population, which was still a big accomplishment for a 3rd grader.
