The following organizations offer Academic Talent Search programs:
What is Talent Search?
Academic Talent Searches are programs, often affiliated with universities or support organizations for gifted children, that offer "above level" testing. When gifted and high achieving students take grade level achievement tests, they often score in the upper percentiles. It can be hard to distinguish between the needs of two children who are both in the 98th percentile as compared to their grade peers.
Taking a test designed for older children enables us to distinguish between those high achieving students who need some acceleration and those who need significant acceleration. Take two fictional 4th graders who are scoring in the 98th percentile on a grade level reading or math test, for instance. Child number one scores in the 70th percentile as compared to the average 8th grader on the Explore test. Child number two, while still very bright and a very high achiever, scores in the 40th percentile as compared to the average 8th grader on the same test. These two children have different needs and different levels of achievement even though we would never know that looking at just the grade level achievement test.
For help in interpreting your child's talent search scores, please visit our test scores page.
Opportunities for Students Who Participate in Talent Search
Children who participate in Academic Talent Search programs also open up extracurricular opportunities for themselves. Many of the organizations that run Talent Searches also offer summer programs for students who have participated in above level testing.
For students who do unusually well on some of the tests there are additional opportunities such as:
For children under age 13 who score 700+ on either the Critical Reading or Math subtest of the SAT Reasoning Test.
Free services for very gifted children under age 18. SAT, ACT, or Explore scores can be part of the qualifying criteria combined with IQ scores.
