Chance Me for Prep Schools! (yall I'm anxious)

Prep School Admissions Prep School Chances
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Hello everyone!

I’m currently a seventh grade student (Asian male :sob:, domestic) thats planning to apply for ninth grade to the following schools: Andover, Exeter, Groton, Choate, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, and St. Paul’s. I’m currently go to a California public school in a pretty good district (we’ve sent 1 kid to Exeter and Andover respectively in the past two years). I’ll be applying for financial aid.

Academics:

  • Currently take the highest level courses that my school offers (Enhanced Math 7/8, Honors World History, and Embedded English honors)
  • Straight A’s beside first trimester Honors World History (teacher said he gave intentionally gave no A’s)

Standardized Testing

  • Haven’t taken SSAT yet, but I’ve taken the ISEE this year (7th grade), and scored 9 9 9 9, so I think I’ll score decently next year.
  • Also, do east coast prep schools prefer the SSAT over the ISEE?

Extracurricular Activities/Awards:

Sports:

  • This is the section I’m the most worried about, I play volleyball for a local club and am on my school’s Boy’s A team (but not nationally ranked or anything). Other than that, I do Chinese martial arts (Wushu) and have a green belt.

Speech and Debate:

  • California state speech champion
  • National Speech and Debate Tournament (NSDA) finalist. (biggest competition in the country, thousands of competitors nationally).
  • Middle School TOC by the University of Kentucky champion
  • Highest Record at Stanford Invitational for a Middle Schooler
  • Attended prestigious debate camp for 2 years.

School Newspaper

  • Founder, Editor-in-Chief of student run newspaper (no funding from school)
  • Amassed 20,000 views from 3 issues in the first issue. I established social media, did school wide promotions, etc. It was a really rewarding experience.
  • NSPA member
  • Conducted in-depth research on our ICE protests, school wide surveys, etc.

National History Day (NHD)

  • County Finalist, Qualified for California State Championships in Sacramento (awaiting results from states, we have a decent chance of placing)
  • Judges Choice Award
  • Cold-emailed mayor of our city and got to interview him at city hall for our project (he posted about it on Facebook and Instagram)

Student Leadership

  • 6th Grade Student Body President and commencement speaker.
    • Organized festivals, interacted with younger grades, gave the morning announcements on the intercom.
  • 7th Grade Teacher Leadership Nomination (one per teacher)
  • Planning to apply for ASB in 8th grade

Theatre

  • Played the male lead in our all-school musical
  • Served as head of staging, mics, and lighting.

Other:

  • School MATHCOUNTS Team Member, our team qualified to states
  • Member of B-BAY Academy, business academy with 12% acceptance rate.
  • Native Chinese speaker.

Interviews and Essays

  • Haven’t done interviews yet, but I have conducted pretty deep research in each of these schools and am pretty comfortable with interview-like settings.
  • Haven’t written my essays either, but I’m intending to write about how a neurological disorder I had as a child impacted my experiences in speech and debate and how it empowered me to create platforms for others such as the newspaper. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please let me know!

I would appreciate any honest feedback and advice for my application! After lurking around CC, I feel kinda under-qualified compared to the average applicant :sob: :sob: :sob: and want a reality check. Would also love some more information about how applying for FA impacts admissions chances.

Thanks everyone in advance!

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You sound like a stellar applicant! Don’t be put off by CC posts, they are not representative of all applicants. If you’ve read CC, then you know this is standard advice: these are reach schools for everybody, so predicting is hard. If you definitely want to go to boarding school, look into schools with higher admit rates. They, too, are excellent schools.

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Thank you so much for the response! I have looked into schools with higher acceptance rates, but I feel quite content with my local private school so I kind of have this “go big or go home” mindset.
Do you think there’s a specific extracurricular I should highlight in my essay on my application? Thanks again.

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In addition to maintaining excellent grades and citizenship, you should continue pursuing excellence in debate and focus on the schools that value that skill and activity. From the list provided, I believe Choate and Hotchkiss stand out in that regard. However, both are difficult admits, obviously.

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Wow, you sound like such an amazing applicant - you definitely do not seem under-qualified! (I cannot chance you as I am merely an 8th grader, but best of luck!)

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I’ve heard quite a bit about Hotchkiss’s debate program, but not that much about Choate’s. Could you provide more information on that? How would debate programs look like at boarding school?

Also what do you think the weakest part of my application is? Sports, lack of volunteering, or something else? Thanks!

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Thanks, that means a lot! If you don’t mind me asking, what do you think made the biggest difference on your application? Congrats on Andover btw!

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You sound terrific! Since you mentioned that sports are what worries you about your application, and boarding schools love kids who try new things, consider the following:

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say you are from the Bay Area (B-BAY) and possibly tall as a bonus (volleyball). You also sound bright and might be keen to protect your noggin with a non-contact sport.

The Bay Area has two of the most competitive rowing clubs in the country: Marin Rowing and Oakland Strokes. Los Gatos is solid if you are in Silicon Valley. You can sign up for a one week Learn to Row camp this summer. If you like it, you can add that to your application and indicate that you are keen to continue developing in high school. And if you love it? Even better! A new sport in high school is always fun.

They don’t recruit at the high school level in the same way as other sports, because most kids will have had very little access prior to high school. (Different story at the university level.) But it is a welcome and somewhat rare detail on an application to any of these schools, and a nice differentiator from the soccer/hockey/lacrosse trios.

Let us know if you give it a try? No worries if you don’t. You are a terrific candidate as you are!

Ending with: If I needed FA and planned to limit myself to highly rejective schools, I would add St. Andrew’s (Delaware), Deerfield, and maybe one more to the list. Just pointing out the obvious…

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if you want an example for a admitted hotchkiss G10 student . My gpa was ■■■■(3.7) I won bbo gold, and have 2 research papers published in a microbiology journal(ASM), I did VA for 10 years, JV tennis, and varsity soccer. Started a business that made over 50k, did a internship at a hospital, worked with a professor at a top chinese university on c.elegans and gene expression. ssat 2400 toefl 112 but overall thats it. Anyways GLLLLLL, lmk if you have any questions in the boarding school process

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I only know that Choate’s debate team often does well in meaningful tournaments.

I wouldn’t worry about the “weakest” part of your application. Instead, lean into and accentuate your strengths.

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How is this helpful to the OP? To my mind, all it does is intimidate them!

I don’t think your application has a weak area, OP. No one person can do or be great at everything, and schools don’t expect that! They like kids open to trying new things, who are kind, and who are leaders. I think you have those things already. And you already have a great “Plan B”. No need to stress too much about boarding school!

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Just emphasizing a couple points above:

(1) I don’t think you have a “weak area” in the things you described. The basic issue, though, is that admissions at these schools isn’t just about satisfying them in these ways and then you get admitted. They are crafting communities and trying to satisfy various institutional priorities, and that gets into factors which we don’t even have the necessary basic information to assess. My best advice is just think holistically about your development, so make sure you are doing plenty of things to develop socially, ethically, and so on, as appropriate for your age;

(2) I would gently push back on your statement, “I feel quite content with my local private school so I kind of have this ‘go big or go home’ mindset.” If you like your day school option, what exactly is it you are looking for out of a boarding school experience that you would prefer? And if you have a good answer to that question, why do you think only schools with very low admit rates can provide that sort of boarding school experience?

The basic fact is there are many more schools with the resources they need to provide that sort of experience than just the ones you named. In that sense, the fact some might have higher admit rates does not in any way mean you wouldn’t be “going big” with the actual experience. And that four-year experience is what really matters. Whatever sense of pride you get from merely being admitted somewhere will quickly fade, not least because if you go to that school, all your new peers will also have been admitted to that school. What is actually going to matter to your secondary school experience, and in fact whatever happens next, will be about what actually happens during those four years, not the fact of admission.

And for what it is worth, I think generally the admissions officers at highly selective boarding schools are basically looking for kids who have been thoughtful about all this. Like, they often want to understand your motives for attending a boarding school, why you think that experience is the right one for you, and so on. If at heart you don’t have answers to these questions that explain why you would also prefer a somewhat less selective boarding school to your day school option, that could be an issue.

Of course in the end, this is going to be up to you. But I would really urge you to spend some time reflecting on what it is about the actual boarding school experience that appeals to you, and then consider investigating further the range of schools that could actually provide you with such an experience.

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I think it’s great that you’re applying to some need-blind schools, like Exeter and Andover. You may want to consider Deerfield too. They evaluate based on application alone and not financial need, which will likely be beneficial in the case that a school has to choose between applicants because of money. Your extracurriculars are very strong and well rounded.

Looking forward, interviews, recommendations and essays will be the most important. Make sure you stay on good terms with your teachers next year so they can write you good rec letters.

Not that you would need more things to do, but I think doing some more community service-based things would likely be beneficial.

Keep up the great work!

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Thank you! To be honest with you, I am not sure what the distinguishing factor was in my application. However, I did apply for FA, and I believe Andover was the only school that was need-blind on my application list. I think it’s amazing that you are preparing a year early - you are in a much better position that I was during the application process. Also, I think you are at an advantage if you are comfortable with interviews, since I still am terrified of them.

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The next thing on your list is the SSAT. Prepare for that and check that box and then shift to essays and interviews.

You’ve done some cool stuff. You seem like an authentically nice, thoughtful, self-directed kid. These schools screen for authentically nice, thoughtful, self-directed kids (emphasis on authentic and nice). They are trying to identify people who would be good additions to their community and can deal with the work.

DO NOT try to force-fit yourself into some perfect candidate profile that you’ve compiled off these boards. There is no such thing, and if the admissions teams smells what seems like a performative attempt to check as many extracurricular boxes as possible, it won’t end well.

Be You. Don’t be not-You. There is no “weakness” in You. The more they get to know the real You, the better your chances. Because you’re a good kid. And that’s what they want.

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All of the schools to which you intend to apply offer generous financial aid. St. Paul’s School is the wealthiest when breaking down the endowment to EPS (endowment per student). St. Paul’s School endowment per student exceeds $1,400,000. Exeter has the largest overall endowment closely followed by Andover.

St. Paul’s School is 100% boarding with an equal number of males & females. SPS is roughly half the size (about 540 students) of Andover and Exeter–both of which are slightly above 1,100 students.

SSAT is preferred.

Congratulations ! Meshes well with theater.

Impressive !

Leadership is important.

Every school on your list should find this to be a very attractive talent.

Academic achievement and interest is important. All of the schools on your list are strong in mathematics.

Significant real world ability/talent.

Highly interesting topic.

Andover, Exeter, Groton, Choate, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, and St. Paul’s School are all among the best boarding schools in the world. Groton, as you probably know, is small (about 380 students total in grades 8 through 12).

Neither Groton nor St. Paul’s offer a PG year–which should be a positive for a one entering as a 9th or 10th grade student. Most PGs tend to be accomplished athletes seeking to bolster their academic record.

Assuming that, as a volleyball player, you are taller than average, then rowing might be a sport for you to consider.

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Unfortunately I’m based in southern California, so these rowing clubs aren’t an option for me, but thanks for the suggestion!

I’ve looked a bit into Deerfield, but haven’t heard about St. Andrews. I’ll look into that!

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I have looked into each of the schools, and there’s something unique about each of them that excite me. For example, I’m interested in L’ville’s Hutchins Center and Research Institutes, Harkness at Exeter, JFK Program at Kennedy, etc.
I don’t think I’m applying to these schools “out of pride,” most people in my area have no idea they even exist lmao. Thanks for the feedback!

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I’ve looked into Deerfield, but according to their website, their financial aid policy is “Deerfield has a very generous financial aid budget. However, it is limited, and therefore we cannot always accept all admissible financial aid applicants.” Do you know if this policy has changed in recent years?
Additionally, I do plan on doing some volunteering over the summer for my local government and the library. Thanks for the feedback!

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It has not. And it’s basically the same for ever single school that’s not need-blind - which is pretty much all except Andover and Exeter

There are others that will meet 100% demonstrated need of accepted students, but you have to first be accepted

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