Question about gt classes

Answered

GT or Gifted and Talented classes are definitely not IB, College, or AP level classes.

Nevertheless many argue that they are some sort of honors class because in order to qualify as G&T you have to meet an intelligence threshold.

I don't know how your HS works but in mine, we don have T&G classes from 9th through 12th grade only K-8th. If you are saying you took classes like T&G Algebra or T&G English, then I would put those down as honors Algebra or honors English.

But be very careful about how you position your narrative about being Gifted and Talented in your college application because that could work against you if the reader reviewing your application feels that things have come easy to you and you haven't challenged yourself enough in High School with seeking out the most rigorous coursework available, having great ECs and getting superior test scores and grades.

This part of the answer is optional to read but is intended for those CV readers who do not know what Talented and Gifted programs are -

Case in point. I know two people, one who is a TAG kid and the other who tested for TAG and didn't get admitted. Since most TAG testing occurs in the first couple of years of grammar or elementary school, there are pros and cons to that because kids develop differently and some kids are very intellectually curious at 7 or 8 but others are way more creative than verbal or quantitative at that age. So the test like an IQ test measures your perceived intelligence versus other kids who take the test, and if you are in the 2nd Std Deviation of IQ 95%+ percentile, you are placed into TAG. But keep in mind this like the PSAT is a snapshot of where you are on that test date for those 3 hours versus where you are going to be. IQ is relative to your age, and someone who tests well at 7 or 8, may get smarter at 13 or 14 or lose grey cells as compared to their peers. Now that you say 17??, an applying to college, you don't really know if you are still the same intelligence compared to your peers, above or below correct because they don't retest you every 3 years.

So in this tale of two students, the T&G kid gets all sorts of entitlements like being excused to go on field trips, workshops, study interesting subjects, and gets a label for their entire K-12 (or 2-12 education). Everyone knows they are a T&G kid and everyone assumes that they are a genius. So if everyone assumes they are a genius, they must be a genius so they don't push themselves as hard as they can because they are already been pre-selected as the elite intellectual group in their school system. The T&G kid I knew, got pushed through all the hard classes until HS and then found themselves having to compete with other kids from other schools all of a sudden. And all the kids they thought they were smarter than all of a sudden start applying themselves and working hard and taking AP classes, IB classes, and online college courses. So when the school starts giving out awards, for merit, or science fairs taking note of outside scholarship, they are not surrounded by all kinds of regular kids, not just the T&G kids, and this is confusing. It's like you were rich and famous for most of your life, and then things get complicated because HS is free for all and anyone gets to grab the brass ring if they apply themselves.

So the other non-T&G kid immediately shares that rejection with me in 3rd grade. I say it doesn't matter. But they decide to embrace that rejection and use that to make sure that they work twice as hard as the T&G kids to beat them. While the T&G is still feeling okay in 10th, they start to feel less sure about being prepared to apply to Ivy League schools and Stanford so they just hope that their title or track record will be enough to push them over the line. By 11th grade, they see other regular kids taking 5 and 6 AP classes and getting 99% percentile board scores and becoming Team Captains, Presidents and serving on Boards in their local community. No one in T&G is telling them how to compete and how to stay in the game so they no longer try as hard. By the time they apply to colleges they have not figured out how to be their best person, and their transcript is spotty, their ECs mediocre, and their achievements marginal to their T&G title. But the little engine that could is running circles around them, getting scholarships, and kicking butt in everything they touch.

The two people in this story have different HS school endings. The T&G kid barely got into a need-aware Top 50 college in the South where their parents had to pay full tuition room and board. And the Non-T&G kid got a full ride into a top Ivy for 4 years. I asked the Non-T&G whether they still remember sharing that they didn't test high enough to get into the program in 3rd grade, and they said that they forgot about that. But say they didn't think that is mattered. They felt that they must have suppressed those feelings. But said it made them mad.

Good luck in your college admissions process.