Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What difference would it make - Hopkins CTY

I would like to find out if our child writes the SCAT and if good enough and can get admitted in the CTY class at John Hopkins.

Does it hold any importance when he applies for college. There are many such summer camps offered by other colleges as well. Which is why I am confused on what to do about this.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Qualifying for CTY isn't likely to directly affect a college application (it's too far in the past to really make much difference by the time a kid applies). What might be more important is whether he uses the CTY courses or any other courses to supplement his education and pursue his passions over the course of middle school and high school. CTY and other similar GT-oriented programs can (1) provide a real peer group for gifted kids, which they often don't get other places (2) pave the way for them to explore and learn in depth. Both of those experiences may directly or indirectly help a college application.

But definitely (and this is speaking as a person who has done admissions interviews for MIT for over a decade) do not have your kid take courses for the purpose of looking good on an application. He should do things he is interested in and will learn from. He should pursue his interests with seriousness and drive and persistence and curiosity. If he does that, it will show through on an application, regardless of whether any specific program is present on the resume. If he's doing things to look good on the application, let me tell you, interviewers and admissions committees are looking for that and we tend not to like it.

My D (15 now) was part of the Midwest Academic Talent search (actual took the SAT in 7th & 8th grade), and we also submitted her scores to CTY. So she never took the SCAT, but has been part of CTY. One benefit has been that because her test scores were very high, she was invited to participate in a gifted and talented online chat/forum site for kids that she loves. She has made quite a few online friends, which is good because it can be hard to find peers for her locally.

She has not been to a CTY class; she thought about it this summer, but went to Davidson's THINK instead (in fact, used the talent search SAT score to gain admission to THINK). At THINK she took a course related to public health, and thinks maybe it would be interesting as a college major. She will go to THINK again next summer, but then she ages out. We were looking online tonight for a public health summer program for the next year -- and, CTY had one this summer at Princeton.

We have been through the college admissions process already with her older sister. In short, I would say that CTY membership and attendance probably does not in itself improve your chances to get into college. What it does, though, is give your kid additional opportunities to meet uber-bright kids like themselves, and also to explore academic subjects in more depth than they might in a typical summer program. My D is definitely inspired by her bright online friends from CTY to study subjects on her own (one summer she learned some Latin and read books on the brain because of their influence). I don't recall what the CTY fee was, but whatever it was has been totally worth it to us, and D hasn't even gone to a CTY program (yet).

I would say to go ahead and try for CTY. Just because you sign up for CTY, you do not have to go to their programs if it doesn't match your kids' interests. But I would also say that given your kid's age (SCAT is for 2-6 grade), it is too early to be picking summer activities for college admissions appeal. Let your kid explore what interests them. Likely one or more of those interests will bloom into something they will want to pursue in depth, and THAT is what colleges like best. That may take you into CTY courses, or lead you someplace completely different.

I went through those interviews over 20 years ago. They were very thorough. A couple lasted for over four hours over lunch one on one with Alumni. If a kid is punching tickets, it is going to show almost immediately.

I do alumni interviews for an Ivy League school. They are NOT four hour one on one sessions, for the most part. I typically have a 30-45 minute interview with prospective students. The interview is generally a mechanism for the school to get an independent view on the kid: are they able to think and speak coherently? Do they have areas of interest to which they have shown dedication and enthusiasm? Are they the kind of kid who would add something constructive to the university environment? I haven't yet been told by anyone that they were part of a talent search. I would assume that many or most were, or would have been if it had been made available. It's nothing that would stand out to help or hurt, unless it led to an area of academic or extracurricular interest that is meaningful to the student.

My Princeton interview was over three hours long. It was with a local alum who was a research scientist who did a lot of programming. I had a ball. He called me to make sure I got my letter and was disappointed to learn I decided to go somewhere else.

Harvard was very short and superficial and I wrote them off my list as a result.

Ditto MIT. It was almost two hours. I had a lot of questions for him and he said twice during the interview that, "If you don't know this, then MIT might not be the best fit for you."

My longest interview was for Caltech, with a retired professor, and was highly technical, with lots of hard questions that just kept getting harder until we were on stuff I did not know anything about. He'd give me some information and then prod me to guess or to give him my thoughts. Not something I had been asked to do much. I had to stop and think for minutes. I felt intimidated and I thought I flunked it. I didn't. I remember one question in particular, "Have you ever stayed up all night working on something and what was it." That was just one of many questions no one else asked me.

And yes, I know MIT and Caltech are not Ivy League schools, but I wanted to help others understand the interview process at elite colleges from an interviewee's perspective.

Recognize that interviews done by alumni are going to vary widely, although the colleges do try to tell interviewers what they want.

My husband and I (we're both MIT alums, so we do the interviews in tandem whenever we can) typically spend 1-2 hours with a kid, usually at a restaurant over a meal (that helps the kids who are shy and puts some structure on the time). We don't stop the interview early if the kid isn't done. We like it when kids ask us questions (in fact, it's a bad sign if they don't have any curiosity), but it's best if they have already clearly done their homework -- don't ask easy things like, "What kinds of engineering degrees does MIT offer?" Mostly kids ask us more about the life of a student there. We're not going to quiz a kid on their knowledge of their field, although we will give them an opportunity to show us what they know if they want to. If they know a lot in a field, we'll ask them to think a bit creatively or speculatively within it. But the fact is, we want to know more about their working style, how they handle failure, how they handle uncertainty, how they pursue their passions, how they work with others, etc.

There's no gotcha here, and even in those interviews where we do feel that this kid is not going to be a good fit, we work extra-hard to try to give them (1) the opportunity to show us their best side (2) the feeling that they have been treated respectfully and thoughtfully and kindly. In general, we don't tell them if we're not going to recommend them for admission -- that's just mean.

I can think of one time where we told a kid that he was not likely to be a good candidate, but that's because he had a very unusual and checkered academic history that didn't yet have the "uphill trend" at the end that would show an admissions committee that he was going to be okay. So we talked with him about what he could realistically do with the next year or two that would help him establish a solid record of follow-through on his goals, so that he could potentially be a better candidate in the future. He seemed to appreciate it.