thank you for responding! the thing is, only lawrenceville has been trying to convince me to stay back a grade. in my interviews, after explaining my situation at my current school (which is probably a bit too convoluted to get into here), all the other admissions officers i spoke to agreed that i could manage 11th grade if i were to attend their schools. and my goal for BS is more so for the programs rather than my transcript. my current school is severely underfunded in its offerings, but STEM is perhaps the most limited, so my hope was that i’d have access to more support in STEM in and out of the classroom (e.g. math teams and contests, which i haven’t had access to as of yet).
also, @CrimsonWife, i’m participating in a science research program at my school, which i included in my application. the issue is, it has like ten students out of the 1500 at my school, so it’s not a very extensive program. i did mention that i was working on quantum field theory and lattice QCD as they related to topology and analysis, though. of course, it’s not really traditional lab research, but my supervisor allowed it.
and @skieurope, i completely understand that above grade-level classes are not special. of course, math isn’t the only thing on my application. i still have a bunch of long-term extracurriculars in non-math (and non-academic) pursuits - i just didn’t know how specialized the rest of the applicant body was when it came to these “unique” interests.