Well Val, they do qualify. You have many of the highest income earners in the country, most educated by capita.
Well...I'm a bit skeptical here. I live in Silicon Valley, and we have lots of very intelligent people here, but I'd never claim that a third of the people in a given neighborhood have IQs above the 98th (or even 90th) percentile. Perhaps a high pass rate in your area is due, in part, to test prep.
Here's a quote from the
New York Times about Hunter:
"In the most recent round, 1,183 applicants took the I.Q. test and 305 made the 98th percentile I.Q. cut-off, a score of about 132."
That's just under 26% of test takers. Even if they all came from the UWS, your one-third claim appears to be exaggerated.
So what really is the definition of hot housing? Preparing your child for life -- which really means school, or a test to get into the best schools?
I'm not even sure what this means.
The educational needs of highly gifted children are so different from those of other kids, the term "best school" has an entirely new definition. For many kids discussed on this list, the best school is at home. For a few others, it's the Davidson Academy. For mine, it's a little private school that lets a nine-year-old sixth grader take algebra, and offers to teach him a history course in French because the teacher happens to know French, too.
For me anyway, if a school is defined as "best" because
lots and lots of people want to send their kids there, I wonder if the school is a good fit for a child with cognitive abilities past (or way past) the 99th percentile. Mathematics tells us that there just aren't going to be
lots and lots of people in the 99+ group in one geographical area.
Just my rambling two cents...
Val
