Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Talent search award ceremonies - attend, or not?

Well, I got curious and assuming I found the right page it sounds like they are using their search for the norm.


Another good idea slain by an ugly fact. It does seem odd that the norms for that search are so different.

Yes, they do look at the top 25% of their region for each year so the numbers may change quite a bit from year to year. I actually thought that the top 25% would be lower this year b/c WATS lowered the bar to do the testing (90th percentile on the grade level achievement test rather than 95th in years past).

There are some regions for which dd would easily be in (TIP, for instance) and there appear to be others where the guidelines for awards are so restrictive that only a few kids get in out of hundreds or maybe thousands (like NUMATS). Honestly, it isn't the end of the world. I just thought that she did well and am surprised that so many other kids did so much better and I'm also disappointed for her b/c she was expecting to get an award.

eta: CBK/WATS doesn't break down their data to the extent that Duke/TIP does & they haven't posted the data for this year yet, but in looking at last year's interpretive guide, 41% of their 7th graders scored at or above a 500 on CR (4% at 600-690 and 37% at 500-590). I have no idea how many of those kids in the 500-590 range were at the upper or lower end of that range. I was actually thinking that her writing score was the one that was a shoo in even though it was lower than her CR score in that it seems like more kids score poorly on the writing portion & it wasn't included in awards last year.

CTY's awards page says that "About 25% of 7th and 8th graders and 33% of 2nd through 6th graders who test qualify to attend Awards Ceremonies." That does sound like their pool is similar to WATS then.

For WATS? I have no idea. They don't post their awards eligibility just the interpretive guide I linked above. If your child is in the top 25%, you get an invite, but you don't hear how far into that top 25 s/he was.

I'm going to drop this at this point in that I don't want to linger on it. It is what it is.

Cricket2 -
Your talent search area has very small numbers, so a few high scorers will skew the results. CBK has hundreds of kids take the SAT/ACT, while JHU and TIP have 60,000 to 70,000 kids. Your DD should be proud of herself for giving up a Saturday morning to take the test.

I found a comment on one of the state award ceremonies sites that I thought was interesting. The number of kids that get awards is based on the size of the room they can get for the ceremony. So I guess it ends up being a curve for practical reasons. Looking at their scores cut-off they had a higher cut-off for the state awards than the regional award ceremony. ... must not have had access to a big enough room that year. Anyway it is a hard lesson to learn as a kid. It is great when you win something, but there are always factors outside your control that can affect winning so you can't take not-'winning' to personally either.

Yeah, I got the interpretive guide via email today. I do wish that they'd break it down moreso than x percent of 7th graders scored within this 100 point range. In any case, only about 100 7th graders tested through WATS on the SAT this year. 52% of them got a 500+ on CR and 41% got a 500+ on writing. My guess is that she was pretty close, but not quite there. Her CR, writing scores & composite scores were still well above the mean for her grade and CR & writing were somewhat above the mean for 8th grade as well.

We attended the WCATY (Wisconsin) ceremony on Saturday. They had some speeches from organization and university people followed by handing out the medals by grade, with student talent performances (various musical instruments, a dance, an oratory, some sketches, etc) mixed in throughout. I thought the student talent exhibitions were a nice way to keep things from becoming monotonous, but I would have been happier if they'd kept the speech-making part to an absolute minimum. It ran a bit longer than the 2 hours scheduled, and by the end lots of people were leaving. DD enjoyed it overall though, and I don't regret going, so I don't mean to be too critical.