I’m applying to boarding schools like Lawrenceville, Hotchkiss, Taft, Exeter, The Hill, and St.Paul. I just wanted to see how good my chances are for these schools. (In 8th grade and applying to 9th) (Pakistani American living in America and will need partial financial aid) Also I am bilingual as I speak English and Urdu
Grades:
All A’s during entirety of middle school and am taking high school course for math
Extra Curriculars:
NJHS Member
Debate captain (Made it to finals every year)
Volunteer at retirement center
Coding(Made chess AI and some other games)
Chess club
Chosen for Theme Week Committee
jiu jitsu (planning on pursuing wrestling)
Tutor
Hobbies:
Writing
Coding (as mentioned before)
Reading
Basketball (broke my leg so couldn’t play for team anymore)
Music (Played the drums and did percussion for 4 years)
Essays: I have pretty strong essays because I’ve always like writing and I’ve had good stories to write about for struggles I’ve went through
Interviews: I’ve had good interviews with mostly every school with some lasting an hour apart from st.Paul’s because I wasn’t able to connect with interviewee
SSAT: I did pretty bad on my first attempt getting a 77th percentile but it was just a practice and I’m going to retake it next month as I’ve been studying a lot more this time as well.
I am not a fan of the chance question as no one is admissions person here, but I did want to answer you. There are a plethora of amazing candidates out there and no doubt you are one of them, however … A laundry list of activities or achievements with no context of where your passion lies or what you have experienced /achieved/learned from these activities makes them meaningless in the see of competition. Be sure to dig deep on your applications.
Also my daughter is in her first year at Lville loving it. Happy to answer any questions. Good luck!
Well I’m not sure about the SSAT myself since I am not a AO and I’m just another student applying but I think there are some cutoffs. For example some schools I’ve talked to said they wanted a 90+ SSAT score or above to have a good chance. I think having the schools average SSAT score and/or higher than the average will definitely help but having below won’t be the end of the world.
Thanks, good luck to you too! After studying and doing practice ssat’s I should be able to get at least an 85th percentile on the ssat. What schools are you applying to.
I hope you do great, I looked at your application and it seems your big in math and science mainly so I think a school that could be pretty good for you would be Lawrenceville cause they have lots of research opportunity for you too
I would’ve loved to apply to Lville, but sadly I don’t think its really a match for me. Thank you for the suggestion though, and thank you for your words.
Good luck on your admissions process! And if you have any questions regarding admissions I can probably answer them so if you need just message me!
Well I forgot to mention that I made a chess ai in my part 1 of my application and I’ve only been mentioning it in my interviews. Do you know if there’s a place where I can put extra information I forgot to add because the chess ai is something I want them to know about
for Andover (im too lazy to check for other schools) there is a section in part 2 where you can fill out more extracurriculars (under the optional supplemental information category)
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