Hello! I’m currently a seventh grade girl at a private day school in MA. I’m Chinese and bilingual (mandarin & english). I will start to apply for high schools this fall, but I’m not sure of my chances for these schools/what schools i should apply to.
Right now some of the schools I’m looking at are choate, groton, middlesex, deerfield, loomis, hotchkiss, st pauls, exeter, andover, nobles, concord academy, BUA, and commonwealth. I’m definitely not going to be applying to all of them (that would be a lot of writing!) but i figured it would be good to look at a lot and then narrow it down. i live close enough to CA to be a day student, and BUA and commonwealth are day schools but i just wanted to include them anyways.
I’m looking for strong STEM, specifically astronomy, astrophysics, and robotics (i want to be an aerospace engineer in the future) and supportive & friendly teachers and students. I’m really passionate about astronomy. I want to go to a boarding school because I think high school is a time to develop independence, explore your interests, and make friends. I also like how boarding schools have such a close community where you can try a lot of new things and have teachers and friends to trust and rely on.
Grades: my school doesn’t give A+'s, so the highest grade is an A which is 94 and above. Is this going to affect how the AOs look at my report card? Should I let them know that A+'s aren’t possible?
- Mostly A’s, 2 A-'s in sixth grade and 1 in seventh. The school year isn’t over yet so I don’t know for sure, but I’m going to try my best to maintain my A’s.
- my strengths are math + science, weaknesses are social studies/history.
Instruments:
- piano for 9yrs, I’ve done competitions and have 1st, 2nd, 3rd place awards. (some are from 4th-5th grade, would those be considered too old to submit?) i’m hoping to do some more competitions from now until september so i have more recent awards.
- guitar? I don’t know if I’ll end up writing this on my application, but I recently started guitar around 6 months ago, it’ll be around a year when I submit my application. Should I put this? It’s more of just a personal hobby that I do for fun, I learn by myself on youtube, etc so it’s probably not that important.
Sports:
- tennis for 4yrs but haven’t done tournaments. 2 years of varsity for school (6th & 7th). Is this going to bring down my chances? I know a lot of schools look for strong athletes.
SSAT:
- Haven’t taken it yet, but I plan to do it once or twice in the fall. I think the math will be fine, I’m more worried about the vocabulary part. Does anyone have resources for practicing vocabulary in particular?
Other:
- I’m a girl scout (5 years) and we’re currently working on our silver award. we’re working with an organization that provides shelter to previously homeless elderly people. (60+ hours)
- I take a math class outside of school, where I’m doing Alg I, so hopefully by the end of 8th grade I’ll be done with Alg II.
- FTC Robotics (1yr) I only started it a year ago, but it was so fun, I regret not starting earlier, and I’ll be in the middle of another season when I submit my application. I plan on pursuing this further which is why I want a school with a robotics team.
- I started an astronomy club at my school (not sure if I should include this on my application?)
I don’t really know my family’s financial aid situation yet. We might apply for it at some schools, but it won’t be full tuition. Maybe 30-50% ish?
I’m a little worried about my interviews because I either talk too much or too little, depending on the situation, but hopefully I can improve that before the fall. I’ve been reading some other threads on here about interview tips so thank you for that!
Another thing is that due to COVID, I repeated 6th grade. I did online learning for half of 5th grade and all of 6th, so I missed a lot of the work. This was also the year I switched from public to private school, so I decided to apply for a repeat year to be able to catch up on the work, and have a complete middle school experience. My birthday is in August though, right before the cutoff date, so I’m only a few months older than my classmates. Will this affect my applications?
Sorry for the length of this post. I talk too much sometimes 
. ANY advice is appreciated, school suggestions, chances, improvements, etc. Also, please tell me if I’m being unrealistic, sometimes I’m a bit too optimistic. But I really do want to go to a good boarding school which is why I’m asking for this advice. Thank you so much!!