Nomination Guidelines for Teachers

We encourage you to nominate only those students who you believe have a reasonable chance of being among the 60 selected for our new class.

  • Nominated students should rank in the upper 1% of their national peer group. This means that they should be more than “above average” or “good at math.” They are being nominated for a demanding program for genuinely gifted mathematics students.
  • A good initial screen is ranking at or about the 95th percentile in reading and 98th percentile in mathematics on a recently administered standardized test.
  • Nominated students should have demonstrated such characteristics as creativity, persistence, curiosity, independence, and enthusiasm for mathematics. (Occasionally some of these characteristics create discipline problems in regular classrooms: please do NOT exclude able students because of this.)
  • We also urge you to apply your professional judgment. You may have a student who, for one reason or another, is not achieving well but you believe has great promise. We invite your professional insight in such cases even if this means departure from other criteria suggested here.
  • We are concerned about under-representation of girls in our classes, and we strongly encourage nominations of girls. However, we apply our admission criteria equally to all nominees regardless of gender, race, religion or national origin.
  • Parents may nominate their children, but it is preferred that nominations come from teachers and counselors.
  • Your judgment should not reflect your estimate of the parents’ interest in this program or their willingness to have their child participate. If you are concerned about a family’s ability to afford fees, please contact us as we can usually be of assistance.
  • If you nominated students last year, your experience may indicate to you how the selection process works. As in the past, we expect to be able to admit to the program fewer than 30% of those nominated.