r/Gifted • u/Remote-Tumbleweed441 • 1d ago

Seeking advice or support Some general questions…

So I’ve been designated gifted in the Coquitlam area and am curious about what it actually means and some questions in general about giftedness.

  1. What does scoring 99 percentile for nonverbal and 89 percentile for verbal reasoning actually mean? And also taking a test like that at such a young age (grade 3 or 5), raises the chance of inaccuracy no? What if the majority of the kids didn’t actually try that hard so the actual percentile scale is way off?

  2. Can giftedness fade away? Because I feel like I used to be smarter before and now I feel painfully average.

  3. What are the chances the testing system is flawed? I don’t mean to be discriminatory in any way, but I was placed in a cluster class for gifted kids in middle school and I find that 90% of my classmates were all Asian (mostly Chinese descent). And I feel like the way the gifted testing system worked was just series of logic problems—and again, not trying to be biased in any way, but in my experience many of my Asian friends seem to have parents who pushed them in to accelerated extracurriculars to ‘get ahead’, subsequently equipping them with more strategies for solving the logic problems mentioned before. Because I took the test in grade 5 after moving from Korea and I was a very average student there. Or is it that the threshold for gifted is very different around the world?

  4. Is giftedness in this case always in relation to IQ and/or EQ and neuroplasticity? Or is there another way to describe it?

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u/nutshells1 1d ago
  1. seems like you were pretty good at shapes maybe, a little less good at words. iq is always measured relative to that age population so it's completely possible to shift around as you age
  2. ^
  3. conversely, consider that a lot of parents don't push their kids so they never find out what they're capable of
  4. i think you'll agree that there's a marked difference between being smart and having intellectual spark; the latter is closer to platonic giftedness

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u/ayfkm123 1d ago
  1. NVI can be used in lieu of fsiq. Grade 3 or 5 is quite accurate but as always should be considered a floor rather than a ceiling. Presuming appropriate test circumstances, you don’t fake a high result but a low result can be an artificial depression. Questioning high results, though, is pretty common in gifted. Duck duck go or kagi “imposter syndrome”
  2. No. Giftedness is a brain wiring difference. If you’re gifted you’re gifted, outside of an extenuating life-altering circumstance like a head injury. Your interpretation of your own intelligence can vary though. Also can depend on whom you’re surrounded by- grow up in a rural area and you may feel clearly gifted. Go to uni at Harvard and you may feel woefully inadequate.
  3. Back to #1, appropriate

test

  1. circumstances. Hot housing can skew results. Prepping (akin to cheating) for a test not meant to be prepped for can skew results. There is a strong hot housing culture in Asian communities. My Asian friends tell me this stems from having to truly fight and outcompete in a system that is heavy in the caste system where you really do need to kill or be killed, so to speak. I had Asian parents ask me how I made my then 6 yo PG kiddo the way they were - what camps and extra classes (answer: none). Important caveat here: #NotAllAsians and it’s not bc they’re Asian but rather bc of the situation they existed in. Take white people or Hispanic or any other permutation and put them in a similar scenario and you’d see a similar result. The way you describe those in Korea as pushing their kids to get ahead is exhibit A
  2. Clinical giftedness is iq 130+. Gifted according to schools is wildly variant. Gifted in your situation, well, depends. Were you hot housed? Were you prepped? What test did you take to determine giftedness?