Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Define MG, HG, PG?

Can someone define the general cutoffs for MG, HG, and PG? I'm relatively new to this forum, and I often want to qualify my responses with the fact that my kids are MG or HG (not sure which) as opposed to PG. I feel I have a much different perspective and experience than posters with kids who are in a higher percentile, and in some instances, it makes sense to explain that. Our school-age DS qualifies for our local gifted schools based on his WPPSI-III testing last year, and for our district's HGT program (top 2%), but I don't know whether to characterize him as MG or HG in this forum.

I think if he is *in good company* in his HGT program than that's MG. If he is still bored or struggling to find likeminded peers in the program then HG would explain more.

Everyone uses the lables differently and things vary so much that a kid would be run of the mill gifted in one neighborhood might be a 'we have never seen anything remotely like THIS' in a different neighborhood.

Remember those scores measure unusualness not smartness.

Hope that helps
Grinity

This is a hard question. I think there are a lot of definitions, which makes it hard to pin down an answer.

The Davidson Institute uses a cutoff of 145 for services to what it calls profoundly gifted youth. So my impression is that 145 is PG around here.

I think of gifted as starting around 2 standard deviations above the mean. This is the top 2% and is 130 on 15-point standard deviation test. I think of HG as past the midway point between 130 and 145 (138 corresponds to the 99.4th %ile or so), but that's probably merely my own rambling definition. But it works for me, and if it works for you too, great! Then there will be two of us using the same terms.

Others use different numbers, such as 120 (~90th percentile) as being moderately gifted or mildy gifted (the label depends on the person defining it).

I've also seen terms such as "exceptionally gifted" but I have no idea how "exceptionally" is different from "profoundly." I can see adding a 160+ category called "really profoundly gifted" or something like that. Again, my terminology.

And then it's possible to muddy the waters even more by adding in creative abilities and what I call "thoughtfulness," which is a tendency to try to see as many different aspects of a question as possible.

You may want to check out the Hoagies blurb on MG, HG, EG or PG.
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/highly_profoundly.htm

I find that hoagies chart very helpful too.

Notice that according to that chart, a WISC-IV FSIQ of 145 is HG but if it moves up 7 points then it is the PG range. A bad breakfast on test day could easily knock 7 points off a child's score, but obviously a good cup of yogurt does not make any child PG.

For me personally the most important distinction is between MG and HG. HG is the range where gifted issues start working their dark magic. My informal chart would go:

MG = Excels in school. Honors.
HG = Struggles in school. Bored in honors.
EG = Refuses to go to school.
PG = Already graduated. Fighting to get in to local university before age 15.

Pru, on first read those categories/descriptions I thought they were amusing, but upon reflection,
I can't say I agree with MG=excels in school; partly because, as kids have ranges, schools have ranges too. I have a son tested mg, however is pretty bored, *especially* in areas where he tests lower. Well, he does excel, but he's still pretty darn bored.

Could I say this means he really has more potential than tests have shown? Could be part of the issue.
Could I say this means the school is doing a poor job? Could be part of the issue; they are known for being fairly rigorous, though...

I am also pretty sure there are plenty of HG kids doing GREAT. I was one of those. Honors, etc.

Anyway, my main point is, it's fuzzy!

Chris, I was mainly trying to be amusing at the risk of being unfair, but also trying to illustrate what limited insight I have gained in the last six months trying to wrap my head around this stuff. It is extremely fuzzy. The only real hard lines I've seen in the studies are the gifted issues like intensities that come with the HG territory.

Thank you all, this helped to clarify, if only the fuzziness in it all!

I think that there are real differences among gifted kids, but the further we get from the mean, the less useful tests are in determining who is what. There are so many ways to be gifted that it really starts being more about who matches the test and who had a good day that day. It's not really a linear construct (think about how we would think about an "athletic quotient" test, and how it might compare athletes who excel in very different sports).

Plus, the tests' reliability drops off (error bars go way up) outside of the "average" range -- they're just not designed for fine-grained measurements, even if it looks like they do. Hard cutoff scores are really hard to justify psychometrically, especially if standard error of measurement isn't taken into account.

And fundamentally, I also don't think the distinction between supposed levels of giftedness has much practical use. Yes, there are real differences among kids. But the precise scores or behavioral checklists aren't really how I recognize them and they aren't the information I need. When I'm doing an evaluation and making recommendations, I don't ever find myself saying, "This kid has an IQ of 130 so we should do X, but this other kid has an IQ of 140 so we should do Y." I take a much more multifaceted look at kids, their learning styles, their personalities, their resources, their environments, etc.

I'd suggest that this applies to gifted kids whose schools aren't making significant accommodations for them, though. My older HG one generally wasn't struggling in school and was a straight A honors student when she was allowed to start 6th grade a little before she turned 10. She was still bored in many honors classes, but not to the point that she refused to participate in the process.

I think that personality matters here, too. My older one cares a lot about grades and is not one who would blow things off even if it killed her and she was miserable crying non-stop. (We've been there.)