Furthermore, CTY had a lot of super fun traditions and special events that made it special.
I attended CTY the year before and I LOVED it, my teacher was friendly yet super knowledgeable about her subject, and even the teaching assistant was extremely helpful in the classroom environment. The aspect of SIG that appealed to me the most was the 5 courses per day schedule. Hi, I did SIG Princeton last summer (2010) and although I did make a lot of friends and the staff were nice in general, I thought that it was a waste of my parents' $4,995. That's what really got them ready for college!
Summer institute for the gifted how to#
These kids know how to learn in most cases they have to learn how to survive without us and be comfortable doing so. I know some people will want their child to learn something over the summer. My daughter will tell you that SIG was the single most important thing she did in middle school and early high school (and this kid has played soccer around the country on a nationally ranked team, but it's SIG that meant the most!). My son is at Swarthmore, and my daughter will go to Hopkins in September. The most important thing - they spent 3 weeks each summer with kids like them, and that was the experience they wanted. They chose their classes, and were responsible for participating and getting something out of it. THey learned to live on their own in a college setting (well supervised, but they thought they were on their own).
That may be our issue as parents, but my kids wanted to go back every year. It took me a couple years to realize that for these kids, that's not the point. The classes were interesting, and in many cases they did not come home with wonderful new knowledge. It is expensive, but to us, in the end, it was worth it. I look at it very differently now than I did then. Sorry to be so negative but this was a big expenditure for our family and we sincerely believe that we were misled about what SIG offered to students.īoth our children attended many years of SIG at Bryn Mawr. SIG brochures claim that over 90% of students would choose to return to SIG but based on what other students said to DD, none of the students that she met would ever return. Also FWIW, she did bring her concerns about the counselors to the attention of the administrators during camp and nothing was done about it. Definitely would not recommend this program to anyone based on DD's experience. Also for the price ($4k for 3 weeks) we were both very disappointed in what was touted as a very high-quality program.
FWIW, many of the teachers were NOT college professors which you are led to believe in the brochures about SIG. She was especially annoyed with the demeanor/lack of leadership by the counselors (they were very condescending to the students) and with the exception of one teacher, she was unimpressed with the teaching staff. She has attended many other summer camps and gives SIG at Emory a thumbs down. It may be OK for younger students, but she (now in 10th grade) was not challenged at all. DD attended SIG at Emory this past summer.