Hello, All! I thought several of you (and maybe others who might read this thread, being in a similar situation as we are) would like to know what happened since I last wrote, how we tried to solve this. She applied to an elite NE boarding school (that advertises excellent financial aid) to repeat her junior year and then have a senior year—and was rejected. We were (voluntarily, mind you—we didn’t initiate an inquiry) told that she was on a “better trajectory” in her current public high school, that she was a “star” there, even though her academic options are very limited and, of course, she’ll graduate at 16. Our daughter was deeply disappointed by this explanation. But she quickly picked herself back up and decided, after much research on all our parts, to apply to study Russian for an academic year under the NSLI-Y program while also applying to three colleges, one Ivy, one women’s college and a local small liberal arts college. With the latter two, we think she has a decent chance of admission and, indeed, believe she might be much better off, given her personality and interests, at the women’s college, especially if she must matriculate at 16. In the end, she decided not to apply either to Dartmouth or Williams, as we thought she might. Thank you to everyone again for all of your input. In April she’ll know her options.
My daughter just returned from a summer program in Jordan with NSLI-Y (Arabic) and I highly recommend the NSLI-Y program. The AY programs are much more competitive than they summer programs (which are already competitive), so please make sure she does her research on what makes a successful NSLI-Y app and take advantage of the help offered by Alums to read essays and give feedback (there are some good Facebook groups and it’s also helpful to read blogs of past participants). NSLI-Y seems to be far less interested in the academic qualifications of their applicants and much more interested in their passion for the language and their intention to continue using and studying that language in college and beyond
@oldcmcalum Thank you! I will! She had told me she had read the summer programs were more competitive (because fewer people wanted to go for the whole year?). I’m grateful for the correction.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Closing thread. Thank you OP for coming back with an update, but now the thread is going off-topic. If he wants to give a final update in April where DD ends up, I’ll reopen for that purpose. Further discussion of NSLI-Y (which is a great program BTW) warrants its own thread.