Help/Chance me please

Prep School Admissions Prep School Chances
1

Demographics:

  • Gender: Female
  • Race/Ethnicity: Japanese
  • Residence: West coast (not ors)
  • Income Bracket: Needs 50-80 % FA
  • Type of School attending: Public

Intended Schools:

Safety: none ( but my lps is really good)
Match: Taft, Mercersburg
Reach: Andover, Exeter, Choate, Loomis, Cate, Concord (uncle went there)

Academics:

  • All highest grade for 6th-8th grade

Standardized Testing:

  • 96th percentile SSAT

Extracurriculars/Activities/Awards:
Writing
Newspaper (founder, editor in chief)
Wrote a book, selling on Amazon
Speech and Debate (treasurer)
Poetry in local newspaper
Scholastic Art and Writing

STEM
Math team (math counts, AMC 8) (not included in app)
Science research, going to state science fair (not included)
Attending a science summer camp at the local uni and learned about biomedical science (not included)

Music
Literally horrible at it but concert band and clarinet section leader
Piano for fun

Sports
Track and field (not included lol)
Ballet (not included) (not high level)
Jazz/lyrical (not included)
Sailing

Japanese related
Japanese school (class rep: gave commencement speech)
Transfer student for Japanese public schools during the summer

Art stuff
Art club (not included)
Independent artist
Scholastic Art and Writing
Random art awards

Environment
Local sustainability organization
Independent volunteering (picking trash up at local parks)
Bosweat Ocean Awareness Contest

Miscellaneous
Ally club
Trying to start NSB at our school
Class rep for 8th grade second semester
I was selected for this program at my school 13/250 kids to go on a retreat to learn about friendship. It was fun, we were selected through google forms that asked everyone at school ā€˜if you had a problem who would you go toā€™ I was chosen for the program bc my name came up a lot. (not included)

LORs:

  • English Teacher - Hasnā€™t written it for me yet, but I think he like me? 7/10
  • Special interest: Environmental org leader, 5/10. 7th grade wh teacher/speech and debate supervisor 8/10
  • Math Teacher - Great, she told me I was amazing :slight_smile: 8.5/10
    *Personal Rec- My homeroom teacher (history) she is an INFJ like me and we bonded over that 9/10. My science teacher/friendship program co-director 7.5/10

Essays:

  • I am an okay writer, I like writing but it is hard for me to ā€œshineā€ with the provided topics. Talked about something unique that only I can write about I guess. My essays encapsulate me in a nutshell.

My questions/reason for creating this thread:
Firstly, my original thread was just getting to long for me to comprehend all the wonderful information that all of you were giving me, and I wanted to create a more chance me thread kind of thing.

I just had a horrible interview online so I was feeling down and bored so if anyone has any advice on how to make that up, it will be greatly appreciated.

I honestly want to know, especially with deadlines looming, how I can improve my application?

Also, to those who are assembling an art portfolio, how are/did you guys doing that?

Iā€™m getting nervous and spending more time on cc during winter break whilst chugging along on editing my essays! TIA, and good luck to everyone else applying.

Thanks for reading this long post!

2

I think you have good chances, work a LOT on your essays! :blush:

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3

You mention many interesting items and then say they werenā€™t included in your app. Is there a reason for this? What did you include on your app, if not these items?

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4

i think there is a limit on how many extracurriculars you can put on your app

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5

Additional Information Section.

6

Ohh right i forgot about that

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7

There isnā€™t.

8

Hi, I didnā€™t include them either because they were recent or because I didnā€™t think they were significant ones. For science research specifically, the science fair isnā€™t until after M10 so I thought there was no point. Should I include some of them in the additional info section? If so, which ones?

9

Let me rephrase this: For my app, I only put down 9 ecs, I purposefully cut some out so that I would seem well-rounded but not scattered. My main ecā€™s (on the app) revolve around writing and Japanese heritage, those two are my ā€˜spikesā€™. In all honesty though, I think art is just as important :slight_smile:

10

When it comes to writing essays, can you just use one of your essays for a different school as well? The prompt is near perfect for it. Is it mandatory of me to change wording?

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No, totally okay to reuse. Just check to make sure the first school 's name is changed (if you used it.)

12

I wrote like 5 essays and Iā€™m using them for every school.

13

Thank you!

14

I have one really versatile essay topic (I changed the wordings and had to add and delete some stuff for each school) and another cool essay. I just found out I have to write more though.

15

I just lost my exeter essays after forgetting to save them in the portal. This sucks so much :pensive:. Let this be a reminder for all of yā€™all. Always click save

16

OMG I feel sorry for you, you didnā€™t wrote them anywhere else? I always write mine in Google Docs!

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They were the only ones where I didnā€™t write in docs because of how exeter was an external link.

18

Hi everyone! I ended on a sad note but I did complete all essays but my Taft essay/short answer hybrid things! Cateā€™s essay was by far the hardest because I couldnā€™t recycle. Cateā€™s character limit is 7000 characters, and I wrote 1007 words (around 5700 characters, still below the limit), but I was wondering, will a long essay be shunned by the AOā€™s? Rather, not-as-well-taken as a shorter more concise essay?
I started my essays in the summer lol but the writing process was very long so Iā€™m kinda still working on my short answers. I have no will power left in me to double check grammar, so please donā€™t mind my errors.

19

I wish I started my essays in the summer :skull_and_crossbones:

Your essay is not above the character limit, so I wouldnā€™t shorten it unless it would benefit the essay itself.

20

Are you applying to Hotchkiss? As a student here, it seems to me that Taft (our rival school) is not that fitting. Just curiousā€¦