Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Question on the Davidsons Academy Admission

My son got the acceptance letter for the Davidsons Young Scholar today. He is 8. I was wondering if this means he can enroll in the davidsons academy (if we choose to), or is there a separate testing procedure for that.
Thanks for any help.
Monica

Congratulations! The Academy has a separate admissions process, including interviews. You can find more info here:
Davidson Academy info

Here's a quote from that page:

"Q: If my child has a qualifying score on all of the test sections but one, could s/he still qualify for admission into the Academy?

Many factors go into considering a student for admission to The Davidson Academy of Nevada, including test scores, transcripts, recommendation forms, interviews and the academic readiness assessment. Test score guidelines are listed on the Qualification Criteria and will be evaluated in the context of all other materials submitted."

Aside from the age issue (Davidson Academy is really focusing on middle-school aged kids and above), I think that the cutoff scores for some of the tests are quite different. If I recall correctly, there was a significantly higher threshold for the EXPLORE scores, for example. I can't remember if this was true for the SAT or other achievement tests.

Not to be nit-picky, but I think Davidson Academy goes out of its way to not limit by age. The qualifications include working at middle school level, and they accept Explore test results from students grade 6 and below.

When we recently talked to someone about the Academy, we were told that they are not only looking for kids that are doing middle-school level work but for kids that are capable of sitting and participating in a middle-school level classroom (or higher.) This may seem like semantics but there's no way my YS who just turned 8 could do it. Yes he is academically ready for middle school or beyond but he has the attention span of a house fly!

I'm guessing there's a certain amount of self-motivation they're looking for too, which depends greatly on personality (and also maybe appears in some a bit older than when they are actually doing middle school work).

In regards to your question, the application for the Davidson Academy is separate from the Young Scholars application. For more information on applying to the Academy you can visit http://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/Articles.aspx?ArticleID=187&NavID=1_43.

We recently went to the Davidson Academy tour and they clearly stated that students should be functioning at a 9th grade level for it to be a possible good fit. According to what we were told their middle school students are working at a 9th + grade level and their high school students are working at a college level.
They don't expect 9-11 year olds to have the background of a high school student, but expect the student to function at that level. There were quite a few 8-11 year olds at the tour and there were a lot of questions regarding this issue.
Besides having the scores and working at this level it was clear that students that attend the Academy are eager learners, study hard, work hard, and get a good amount of work outside of school. It appears to be a rigorous program. We were extremely impressed. There were families with kids 9-11 that were working 4+ years above grade level and not all felt their child was ready for the program. Hope this helps. I highly recommend going on a tour.

Thanks for sharing your experience as kind of a virtual tour of the tour. Nice!