John Hopkins University CTY Program

Johns Hopkins University developed the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) to identify, challenge and reward academically talented young people. CTY offers several programs for students completing grades 7 and 8:

Talent Search
Summer Programs
Distance Education
Family Academic Programs
Diagnostic and Counseling Center

Nido acts as a liason between John Hopkin’s CTY summer programs and our students. The summer programs are located on various college campuses around the United States and offer a wide range of subjects in the areas of science, math and writing.

To qualify for CTY summer programs, a student must first perform at or above the 97th percentile compared to other children their age on a nationally normed achievement test, for example, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that our students take every year. Students then apply to CTY and register to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), a rigorous above-grade level test. Students must then earn an SAT score that places them in the top one half of one percent of their same age peers.

Based on the students’ SAT scores, there are two types of summer programs that our students can qualify for:

CTY Courses: designed for students whose SAT scores meet or exceed the approximate mean for college-bound high school seniors. Cover traditional core curriculum topics in the liberal arts: Biology, Chemistry, Composition, Ethics, etc. Some courses, such as Individually-Paced Mathematics Sequence and Fast-Paced High School Biology, are designed to help students advance to higher level courses at school. Others, such as Number Theory and International Politics, provide students access to subjects they would not see until college.

CAA Courses: are open to students with a wider range of SAT scores. In general, CAA courses provide qualified students with a more elective-style curriculum, offering students the opportunity to engage in challenging special topics outside the traditional curriculum. Biotechnology, Principles of Engineering Design, and Whodunit?: Mystery and Suspense in Literature and Film are indicative of typical CAA topics, along with a suite of field-work-intensive courses in marine science unique to CAA.