Are you wondering what all the buzz about the SCAT is about? Do you want to participate in this event you’ve just heard of? Well, here’s all you need to know about the SCAT test.
What is the SCAT and who organizes it?
The SCAT or School and College Ability Test is a test conducted by the John Hopkins Centre for Talented Youth. It is an online test made to measure the verbal and quantitative reasoning of the candidates taking the test.
Designed with the purpose of finding the most talented and proficient children and grooming them as well as possible, ensuring that no future potential goes waste.
The SCAT is used as an entrance test to the various programs and schemes conducted by the JH-CTY. These include:
- Family education Programs: These help bring gifted students and their families together to help nurture their interests, explore new domains, and interact with others. Unlike the other programs, this has no minimum qualifying scores.
- Online Programs: The JH-CTY organizes an online program for the most gifted of their students, those who qualify in such programs get the option of studying in courses organized by them such as:
- Computer Science and Technology.
- Critical Reading.
- Grammar Matters.
- History and Social Sciences.
- Science and Engineering.
- Mathematics, this includes the chess club.
- World Languages, including Spanish, Mandarin ,and Arabic.
- Writing.
- Art meets Science.
Several new courses such as web design and calculus have propped up in recent years making this course all the more alluring, both for prospective student candidates and their parents. Some of the courses are session-based, others are individually paced.
- L.I.V.E Programs: These are new interactive programs specially tailored to give students a very different experience. This course offers a mixture of instructor taught activities and self-learning consisting of experiments, group discussions, and projects done with other members of the class.
These courses cost $1000 per session and extend for 90 minutes each.
- Summer Programs: These programs conducted by the foundation are meant at inculcating the habits of learning during the Summer months when schools are out. Due to the pandemic, CTY will not be holding its annual summer programs.
These programs are one of the biggest draws to the foundation where several thousand students gather and learn about several different fields.
It also offers a special program in Hong Kong that requires all non-citizen to obtain education citizenship to attend.
These summer programs include a one week course for students of grades 2 to 4 and a longer session for those of grades 5 and 6.
- International Programs: The CTY encourages the spirit of growth of education and loves nurturing that feeling. Thus, they hire instructors from across the world, both to encourage diversity as well as to give the best education to their students. They also invite research scholars from the world over who are interested in working with them.
International students are also quite common in programs organized by the CTY.
Apart from the aforementioned benefits of the CTY, there are also several internship offers, some are even paid or credited for, but most importantly all of them give you valuable work experience which can help you in choosing a career as well as being recruited into a job.
This leaves you with useful professional contacts and possibly even a mentor to help you make a much more attractive college application.
There exist tens of internships such as:
- Social Science and Arts: American Anthropological Association and the Smithsonian Museum.
- Math and Computer Science: Microsoft High School Intern Program and Stanford University RISE summer internship program.
- Science: NASA High School Internships and CIA Internships.
All this is just the tip of the iceberg. With the CTY program, you can work in hundreds of different institutions and create the perfect portfolio and contacts to build a perfect career for yourself.
As you can see, the program offers a plethora of opportunities waiting to be exploited. This program has existed for a very long time and participating in one of these courses can give a strong edge to your resume.
With hard work, dedication, and writing scat practice tests, you’re sure to find a place in this prestigious program If you plan to write the SCAT test soon, remember to keep all of this in mind!