Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Talent Search awards

Talent Search testing seems to be the subject du jour at the moment, so I'll continue the trend .

Dd#1 took the SAT at the end of Dec &, while we haven't rec'd a paper copy of her results yet, I did call in and get them. She did reasonably well. They didn't give me percentiles, but based upon what I can see online, she did better than the avg hs student on writing and reading (mid 500s). Her math score was a bit lower than that, which was not unexpected.

CBK/WATS (our local talent search) is including writing in their awards configuration this year which will work in dd's favor. They give awards to the top 25% of a given grade for the composite score (all three subtests) as well at the top 10% and top scorers. I know that she won't be a top scorer, but it is possible that she will be in the top 25%. We won't know for sure until April, I believe, for a May awards ceremony.

When she made the awards ceremony in 4th grade, if you didn't personally attend the ceremony, you didn't get your medal. They wouldn't mail them. Dd has joined honor choir at her middle school and they are having a big festival near Denver on the same day as the awards ceremony. The awards ceremony will be about a 40 minute drive from the location of the choir festival. Dd tells me that she "can't" miss the choir festival or she'll get a zero for her grade on that which will drop her to a B in the class. Knowing the choir teacher, I don't doubt that this is accurate. She does, however, want to go get her award if she makes the awards.

Would you even try to make both events work (pick her up immediately after she finishes singing and drive fast to the awards and then take her back after the awards)? I am, of course, worrying about things that may not even occur!

Congrats to DD on the scores. In previous years from the Duke talent search, a 500 was about the 80% for reading and for math.

As for the conflict, I did a frantic combination of events when I was younger and had sports/school conflicts with academic award ceremonies or opportunities. It seemed to be a good compromise, albeit a less-than-ideal one. For me, some of the conflicts with school or my select teams were worth the drop in grade for the chance to meet age-peers who were also intellectual peers...

I would explain the situation to the school and the talent search and see if someone will accomidate her. If you sent a self addresses envelope with prepaid postage would they help you out?

Good luck. Oh, why does the important stuff always have to be on the same day?

She got around a 500 last year on the CR section as a 6th grader, but didn't make the awards b/c she didn't do too well on math. I'm not sure that she'll get in for that reason. Even though her CR and writing sections were certainly in the top 10-20 percent of her grade, they look at the total combined score from all three. Only those who are in the top 25% for the combined score will get an award. Her math score was in the mid 400s. Math she does not learn by osmosis & she's only taken up through mid-7th grade math, so that's about where I'd expect her to fall on that. We'll see, though.

eta: I just spoke w/ the director of our talent search for a totally different reason (a question on the JKC scholarship app) and she tells me that quite a few things are different this year:
1) you can do the talent search testing w/ a grade level achievement score in the 90th percentile rather than 95th that it used to be (which may make scores from this pool lower )
2) writing being included in the awards is new
3) they are now giving awards for the top 25% on any subtest, not just the composite score. She felt that dd would likely be in that group with her scores, so I'll start by talking to the choir teacher and see what we can make work.