My 11 yo son took part in the JHU talent search this year and scored highest in our state, so he has a brag line for his future transcripts, if we should ever want to enroll him in a competitive school. He also took the ACT independently, and though he scored exceptionally high on that, he doesn't have any similar claim to make. He can of course, say he got a score of X, but that doesn't sound as immediately impressive as "highest in the state". If he does well on the talent search SAT this coming year, he may qualify for a free class, which would be nice.
I think there are some valid reasons to go through a talent search, but YMMV!
