Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment CogAT and SAT (9) questions

DS9 was administered the CogAT and Stanford Achievement Test 9 a few weeks ago and I received some info today. The only info I received is the percentile that he scored in each area and I'm curious if I should ask for more detailed info.

He was 'conditionally accepted' for the gifted program based on all but one percentile (DS was accelerated to 5th, does that matter concerning testing?). I'm wondering if this is indicative of a weakness in a particular area of which we'd want to be aware.

Anyway, the percentiles for CogAT were...
Verbal - 95%
Quantitative - 97%
Non-Verbal - 86%

Stanford Achievement Test was 99% in both Total Reading and Total Math.

I'm wondering about the 86% (which fell below the 90th %ile cutoff for GT program, hence the 'conditional acceptance').

What I received was the form acceptance letter with just percentiles listed. Is there a more detailed report that I may be able to see, or is this one of those tests that parents generally aren't provided score reports?

We're not even sure that DS will participate in the GT program this year, but it's nice that it's an option. Thanks for any insight...

Thank you both for your replies. I plan to call the GT person at school this morning to find out what the program is like here. I'll probably ask for more detailed info to see what they can/will provide (just because I'm curious by nature).

Glad to know the lower score is not cause for concern. DS did say that he didn't enjoy this test as much as some of the others (particularly the WISC) he's taken. Maybe that was a factor. Anyway, no matter. Now just to find out if the program will be something beneficial for and interesting to him.

Thanks again!! I appreciate your help.

Jdax, the following might not apply to you, but just fyi from what I recall -
On the cogat you could also get a score profile, which is a 4 or 5 character code to use on the cogat.com website to get a profile of students with similarly proportioned scores, and information about possible learning styles. I think this is intended as just a starting place for teachers or parents to understand the overall picture for a student.
It may also help some parents figure out better whether the scores they see 'line up' with what they see in their child on a day to day basis; that is, does the description/profile make sense for a particular child? If not, then perhaps the scores are not representative.

I think we also saw a 'number attempted' which was good information to have for our ds, a slower type guy.

The scores sound very solid, however, and I certainly hope the one slightly lower won't be a problem.

Thanks! I saw the application you're talking about (I think), and thought I'd try to figure some of that out. I spoke with someone to try and find out more info about DSs scores, and didn't really get anything other than the test was age-based. It's OK though, he qualifies for the program, so now we just have to decide if DS will participate. It sounds like an awesome program and I'm hoping he'll be interested (he didn't enjoy the GT program last year and is a bit soured on them now).