Alibata feature The Centre for the Talented Youth of Ireland (CTYI) is a youth programme for students between the ages of six and sixteen of high academic ability (generally scoring at the 95th percentile on assessment tests for 6-13 year olds and 97th percentile for 12-16 year olds) in Ireland.
CTYI was founded in 1992 and is based at Dublin City University in Glasnevin, Dublin 9. Colm O'Reilly has been its director since 2005. The centre offers various courses for gifted students as well as conducting research and promoting the needs of the talented in Ireland.
Some of the students at the summer programme come from overseas, mostly from the United States. Owing to the intensive nature of the programme, most of the 250-300 students who attend each session are residential, living in college accommodation for the duration of the course.
Weekdays in the summer programme are highly structured. Classes run from 9am to 3pm, with an hour's break for lunch. Activities take place from 3.15pm to 5pm, supervised by the residential assistants (RAs). Between 5pm and 7pm students have dinner and are required to attend a meeting with their RA group. 7pm to 9pm is taken up by the study period, which is supervised by the teaching assistant. Social hour takes place between 9pm and 10pm, with lights-out at 10.30pm. On weekends, social activities such as discos, shopping trips, visits to the cinema, excursions to various interesting sights in Ireland, talent shows, casino nights and so on are organised.
The centre runs correspondence courses throughout the year for 12-16-year-olds and also for Transition Year students who do not have to fulfil any aptitude test requirements. Courses include Creative Writing/Writing By Mail, Journalism, Psychology, Philosophy and Legal Studies.
These are once-off days at DCU, usually Saturdays, which feature a lecture or series of lectures on a particular topic of interest, e.g. "The Science behind Superheros".