Center for Talented Youth



The Center for Talented Youth (CTY) is a gifted education program for school-age children, founded in 1979 by Dr. Julian Stanley at Johns Hopkins University. It was initially a research study of the rate at which gifted children can learn new material and became the first program of its kind to identify academically talented youths and provide learning opportunities. CTY offers numerous programs around the world and online but is best known for its fast-paced Summer Programs, which are held on many university campuses throughout the United States and serve over 9,000 students each year. CTY is an accredited school for grades 5 to 12 by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools.

Other names
CTY has held several previous names. Dr. Stanley's research groups, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) and the Program for Verbally Gifted Youth (PVGY), were combined in the early 1980s to form the Office of Talent Identification and Development (OTID). OTID was renamed Center for Talented Youth, which was expanded to Center for the Advancement of Academically Talented Youth (CAATY) for a brief period. Later, CTY became the Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth (IAAY). However, most students, parents, schools, and staff members preferred to call it CTY, and the name was changed back in 1999.

Talent search
Generally from October to February of each year, CTY's Talent Search recruits highly-able elementary and middle school students (who have scored at or above the 95th percentile on in-grade standardized tests) to qualify for CTY's academic programs. Applicants then take a standardized test that is above their grade level, beyond the ability of most children their age.


 * Students in the 2nd to 4th grades take the School and College Ability Test (SCAT) at the Elementary level, administered by either CTY or Prometric.
 * Students in the 5th and 6th grades take the SCAT at the Intermediate and Secondary levels, respectively. Previously the PLUS test was used.
 * Students in the 7th to 11th grades take the SAT or ACT, administered by The College Board.

To qualify for CTY Summer Programs, a 7th grade student must score at roughly the 50th percentile achieved by graduating high school seniors. Younger students must pass somewhat lower thresholds based on grade level; applicants above 7th grade face correspondingly higher cutoffs. Students in 5th grade and above may optionally take CTY's Spatial Test Battery; high scorers on the STB face slightly lower SCAT or SAT requirements. CTY has considered other entrance criteria several times over the years, but found that SAT (et al.) remained the best predictor of student success in CTY courses.

CTY has another summer program, the Center for Academic Advancement (CAA), for gifted students in grades 7 to 11 who are in the top 2% of their age group. CAA is similar to CTY in most respects, aside from lower SAT score requirements and slightly less rigorous curricula. CTY Distance Education courses have test score requirements similar (but not necessarily identical) to those of the summer programs.

CTY course eligibility is based on the math and/or verbal subscores, depending on the course's subject matter (e.g. science courses mainly require math, writing courses require verbal). Over 80000 students are tested each year, more than half of whom qualify for some portion of CTY's course offerings.

CTY Talent Search officially operates in Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Students from other states are officially served by sister programs such as Duke University's Talent Identification Program or Northwestern's Center for Talent Development; however, they do not offer as many programs or sites as CTY, so cross-registrations are allowed. Students from every state, and dozens of countries, participate in CTY programs each year.

Summer programs
The Summer Programs are CTY's hallmark and its most visible public face. Many people use the term "CTY" as a synonym for the 7th to 11th grade CTY summer program.

CTY sites typically host a few hundred students each, divided into a few dozen course sections, for one or two three-week sessions. Separate sites and courses are offered for each level of students (grades 2-4, grades 5-6, older students CTY, and CAA). Sites for the youngest group are commuter programs; students attend only in the daytime. All of the other sites are residential programs where most students live in college dormitories during the session; a few in the local area may opt to commute.

CTY sites
CTY summer programs for the 7th grade and above are held at the following sites:


 * Franklin & Marshall College - Lancaster, Pennsylvania
 * Johns Hopkins University - Baltimore, Maryland
 * Dickinson College - Carlisle, Pennsylvania
 * Hawaii Pacific University - Kaneohe, Hawaii
 * Loyola Marymount University - Los Angeles, California
 * Princeton University - Princeton, New Jersey (Entering 10th-12th grades only)
 * Siena College - Loudonville, New York
 * Skidmore College - Saratoga Springs, New York

CTY summer programs for the 6th grade and below are held at the following sites:


 * Moravian College - Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
 * Washington College - Chestertown, Maryland
 * Stanford University - Palo Alto, California
 * Mount Holyoke College - South Hadley, Massachusetts
 * California Lutheran University - Thousand Oaks, California
 * St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School - Alexandria, Virginia
 * The Windward School - Los Angeles, California
 * Garrison Forest School - Owings Mills, Maryland
 * Maranatha High School - Pasadena, California
 * Sandy Spring Friends School - Sandy Spring, Maryland

Other summer programs
CTY has recently begun to hold residential programs for students in 10th to 12th grade. Six advanced courses are offered at Princeton University. This site has the same entry requirements as CTY for 7th to 11th graders; some courses also have prerequisites. In addition, the Civic Leadership Institute (CLI) (grades 10-12) hosts 80 students a year. An alliance between Northwestern's Civic Education Project and CTY with the same academic requirements as the Center for Academic Advancement, the CLI service-learning program was hosted last year at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.

CTY International
CTY partners with numerous educational institutions around the world. For the most part, their programs and summer sites are hosted independently of CTY.


 * CTY Bermuda is operated by Bermuda's Institute for Talented Students in affiliation with CTY.
 * CTY China is a CTY sub-unit at the University of Nanjing, exclusively available to high school students.
 * CTY España (CTYS) is an accredited center of Instituto Cervantes.
 * CTY Ireland (CTYI) is operated by Dublin City University.
 * CTY Mexico is a CTY sub-unit at the Universidad de las Américas, in the city of Puebla, available to grades 7-10.
 * CTY Thailand is operated by Mae Fah Luang University.
 * The United Kingdom's National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY) was founded on CTY's program model. Each year approximately three students from the United States and three students from the UK switch places; however, in 2007 it was 7 students.

Life in the CTY summer program
Life during the three weeks at CTY is carefully structured. Students are required to be awake by a particular hour, though they have some flexibility in which time they go to breakfast before their first class of the day. The first class period lasts approximately three hours, usually with a short break (around 7-15 minutes); students then eat lunch and spend two more hours in a classroom before participating in two one-hour recreational activities chosen from a daily list. After dinner, some evenings include talent shows or dances, but most have a two-hour "study hall" followed by casual social time. Lights out is enforced by the residential staff, although some students use flashlights or find other ways to stay up later.

Classes move at a very rapid pace, some of them covering one year of high school material or even a college course in three weeks. Most classes have no grades, very little of what students might call "busywork", and no assignments outside of class hours. At the end of the program, the parents of each student receive a personalized academic report from the instructor with a certificate.

The schedules vary slightly at different sites. Lancaster, the site with the largest student body, has an earlier breakfast start time, and staggered lunches for different classes. Similarly, Activities are shorter at some sites, being 45 minutes long as opposed to a whole hour.

Most forms of external media and electronics are heavily restricted to maintain student focus on life at CTY. Few televisions, radios or newspapers are present; computers and video games are not allowed, and cell phones are not to be seen outside the dormitories. The few allowed forms of communication with the outside world include mail and phone calls just before lights out (or at the break of dawn).

At some CTY campuses, such as the JHU Homewood campus, students are allowed to purchase late night meals.

CTY Summer Program culture and traditions
Most CTY sites are home to instances of children's street culture, passed to new students by returning ones. Some traditions are unique to a particular campus, while others have been transplanted to many sites. The Lancaster and Carlisle sites, which have operated since the early 1980s, are often regarded as the CTY campuses with the most traditions. The JHU site seems to have fewer traditions than other sites of the same age, possibly due to its proximity to the watchful eyes of the CTY main office.

Some popular traditions include playing of intense games of four square and ultimate frisbee, the singing of certain songs specific to the site, theme or spirit days, and pranks on the RAs or the TAs. "The Passionfruit," where students gather to toast various events and people from their time at CTY, is very popular and is considered to be the most important tradition at many sites. At some sites, the Passionfruit experience is only available to "Nevermores" or "Nomores" - older students who are in their final year of CTY eligibility. Perennial favorite songs are played at most dances ; Don McLean's American Pie is typically the last song of each dance, with callbacks that vary from site to site.

Student evaluations
CTY students are not given traditional letter grades. Instead, they are given page-long written evaluations composed by the instructor with input from the teaching assistant. The evaluations are signed by the instructor and sometimes by the teaching assistant and must be approved individually by the Site Director. The CTY Instructor's Handbook suggests writing three types of evaluations which correspond roughly to grades of "high pass," "pass," and "low pass."

These specific terms are not used, since they suggest traditional grading, but instructors generally follow the suggestions of the Handbook and write three boilerplate evaluations. Students are ranked into three groups and receive a corresponding evaluation to which personalized remarks specific to the student are added, i.e. "Your story, Motel Saturday Night showed both biting satire and keen understanding of U.S. oil policy." The difference between the three types of evaluations may be subtle.

Students taking the Investigations in Engineering class may opt to obtain college credit from the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Distance Education
CTY also offers Distance Education courses, with the same eligibility standards as the Summer Programs. CTY's Distance Education program began in 1983 with the Writing Tutorials through postal mail; that course has since migrated to email, and many other courses have been added. CTY now serves approximately 7500 distance students per year, and will likely surpass the Summer Program's head count at some point. Additional distance students can be enrolled by adding an instructor and a computer or two, whereas summer sites are rarely added or expanded.

Students usually receive assignments through the Internet and turn in their work the same way. The most common examples are by email and through a website, although many also use CD-ROMs and/or downloaded files. CTY's online course offerings have expanded from math and writing into many subject areas, including economics, foreign language, and the physical sciences. Some courses, such as writing, require students to complete an assignment by a deadline before receiving a new assignment. Other courses, such as accelerated math, are individually paced; each student may complete as much material as they can within the given enrollment period.

Other CTY programs

 * Family Academic Programs, also known as Conferences, are collections of seminars and hands-on activities in various locations around the world.
 * The Study of Exceptional Talent is a longitudinal study of Talent Search participants who scored 700 or above on the math or verbal section of the SAT before age 13, such as Terence Tao.
 * Imagine is an educational magazine aimed at middle and high school students.
 * Center for Academic Advancement is a program nearly identical to CTY's summer programs, but with a lower minimum SAT score requirement.

Publicity
CTY was featured in a July 2004 article in The New Yorker magazine entitled "Nerd Camp", and Session 1 of 2005 at Lancaster is the setting for the upcoming (2008) movie production, also entitled Nerd Camp. This movie is being written by Adam Stzykiel, and is being produced by Nickelodeon.

CTY was also shown in an hour long CNN special on gifted children.

CTY alumni and students
CTY is home to many students of great academic ability. Achievements and recognitions for CTY students include:


 * 6 of 32 American Recipients of the 2006 Rhodes Scholarship.
 * 26 Rhodes Scholarship winners since the year 2000.
 * numerous top finishers in the Intel Science Talent Search, including the first-place winner in 2005.
 * numerous award winners in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, including a grand prize winner in 2007.
 * 2 winners of the Siemens Westinghouse Competition.
 * 2 contestants in the 2006 National Geographic Bee national-level competition.
 * At least one participant in Scripps National Spelling Bee.
 * numerous participants in the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament, including winners Graham Gilmer and David Walter.

Many CTY alumni go on to attend Ivy League and top tier universities: MIT, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, the California Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and Stanford University.