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Unless it's a gifted magnet school, any school classifying 16% of its student body as gifted is obviously mis-classifying a raftload of them. At the 84th percentile you're only just outside one standard deviation. No wonder she feels superior.
With that said, my friends were almost entirely below me in IQ, because the ones at my level were in things like the chess club or the math club, and I wanted to have fun. Most of my closest friends were the kind of AP students that actually have to study, and they'd get mad at me when I'd do things like crank out a 5th period essay during lunch. But I also had a several friends who'd never seen the inside of an AP class.
Depending on the area, 16% of kids really could test GT, even though in the larger world it should be less than 1%. However, IIRC, the OP's chools cast a very wide net, make various exceptions, and use criteria other than IQ.
I often found students between 1 and 2 standard deviations above normal to be the most annoying. They've had people telling them how smart they are for a long time, and they lack an appreciation for how slow they are compared to those well into the top 1%. I spent much of my high school career trying to give those students an appreciation of our differences (in math and science anyway... that's as far as my gifts go).
It reminds me of this video of a Ferrari racing a fiat... and an F1 car.
The bright kids are like the Ferrari. They think they're really fast, and that they should have kinship with other fast cars. From the perspective of the F1 car, the Ferrari isn't even fast.
I don't think you can find like souls simply by looking for GTness. I would suggest your DD try to find activities that she enjoys, and she is likely to find some like souls at least in those areas. My friends in high school were the artsy/theatre kids, but no soul mates within my high school. I found the most like-minded people among the skate punks, likely finding an outlet to boredome in discovering how high they could make their mowhawks. I find more friends just doing things I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I didn't meet most of my good friends until after college.
Unless it's a gifted magnet school, any school classifying 16% of its student body as gifted is obviously mis-classifying a raftload of them. At the 84th percentile you're only just outside one standard deviation. No wonder she feels superior.
ITA and I know that I've brought up before that I feel like rampant overidentification of GT is a problem in our area. There are no gifted magnet schools locally, so this is not one. Like MON mentioned, the very large majority of kids with GT identifications do not have these ids based on IQ tests. I totally understand $ constraints for things like that, but do wish that there was a better understanding of the difference btwn a kid who is in the top 1% of ability vs. a kid who is GT b/c s/he achieves highly, was recommended by a teacher or parent using a subjective rating scale, is creative, shows evidence of leadership, or was given both the CogAT and OLSAT (sometimes more than once) and hit the 95th percentile on one part of one of these tests at least once.
Having her develop a superiority complex is definitely not desirable. Middle school was a good place for that not to be a major issue b/c, although her middle school had also identified about 17% of their kids as gifted, dd was probably the youngest in her grade with the combo of the grade skip and her bd making her younger, and she had an unusual group in that one grade where there were a few definitely gifted kids including the one friend who is HG+. While she had a lot of kids in her accelerated classes who she felt to be bozos, she had at least the few who were impressive enough that she wasn't developing a sense that she was smarter than everyone else in the school. This middle school group has dispersed & dd is at a different high school than her HG+ friend, though.
I'm not sure what more we can do to avoid dd developing an attitude problem. Like I said, some of it may be her becoming more of a teen, but it would be really nice if she could find some other kids who engage her and help ground her in the reality that the rest of the world isn't stupid. The new group with whom she is eating at lunch sounds like a better fit for her and she is signed up for speech next year, which a # of you have mentioned as a good place to meet gifted kids, so we'll see how it continues to develop.
I often found students between 1 and 2 standard deviations above normal to be the most annoying. They've had people telling them how smart they are for a long time, and they lack an appreciation for how slow they are compared to those well into the top 1%. I spent much of my high school career trying to give those students an appreciation of our differences (in math and science anyway... that's as far as my gifts go).
It reminds me of this video of a Ferrari racing a fiat... and an F1 car.
The bright kids are like the Ferrari. They think they're really fast, and that they should have kinship with other fast cars. From the perspective of the F1 car, the Ferrari isn't even fast.
You gave me an excellent laugh. A co-worker and I have talked about this before. People who are a bit smarter than average feel like they are super smart and know as much as their is to know and are as smart as can be. People who are smarter than them realize there is no ceiling on being 'smart' and are aware of just how much there is to learn and know in life.
My son is STILL searching for that one soulmate. He was confident that the same kids in the elementary g/t program would surely sign up for the middle school math league, robotics, quiz bowl, orchestra, science olympiad, etc...What a shock when my son was the ONLY one who did. The g/t elementary identified kids have dropped off the radar and according to my son, are more concerned about finding a boyfriend/girlfriend, and facebook. When I look back, I remember being surprised with the kids who were chosen for the program. They were the typical teacher pleasers and the kids of teachers. Now fast forward to middle school...The kids who DID sign up for math league, quiz bowl, science olympiad, etc...were the kids who were never identified for the g/t program. Sigh... and as you know, a whole OTHER story! These kids have ended up being the kindest and the ones my son can relate to the most. He still is searching for the soulmate, but it's a start!
FWIW, we aren't in HS yet. I do have several friends who have gifted kids in high school. I've noticed that the kids seem to hate the "gifted" label. They would rather die than go to a "gt" lunch. They seem to want to be identified by what they are doing -- band, robotics, AP calc, whatever. They perceive the gifted label as a parent thing.
I find more friends just doing things I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I didn't meet most of my good friends until after college.
