@ghostotter
You are in the right place to explore schools and gather information!
Question: are you applying for next year? (meaning are you applying now?). Will you need financial aid? Do you have an option at home if you DON’T get into boarding school? (If not, then you’ll want to cast an even wider net.)
SSAT – not required (but optional) at most schools this year, and normally I would say that you might want to skip that because you are starting this process a bit on the later side (still doable, but a little bit on the later side). However: it sounds like you do very well in testing? Like when you say you had the highest STAR score, do you mean like 99% percentile? Because your grades are good-but-not-amazing, a very high SSAT score could help I’m thinking. (Note that a 99th %-ile in regular testing does NOT usually translate into a 99 for SSAT; just a heads up. but if you can get above an 85 I think it would be a worthwhile thing to do, as long as you also have time to do the applications and get the recommendations.
I think your first order of business, assuming you are applying for 9th grade, is to get a list of schools. First, get a sense for what you are looking for in a boarding school. and then, develop a list of schools with varying levels of acceptance rates. Run some searches here on the names of schools you find. Poke around their websites, sign up for a few zooms that they are all offering these days (gosh we have been on SO many zooms yikes), and then start applying. Boardingschoolreview is a great website to gather preliminary info, like admissions stats, etc. Also, if you let us know what you are really looking for specifically in a school, I’ll bet we could offer suggestions to help start you off. But don’t be afraid to settle in and run some searches and read away! You’ll be amazed by how much you’ll learn about schools!