i’m in y8. i just finished the school year (today!!) here is my basic profile, please help.
i’m worried i won’t make it. i’ve bought an ssat book.
here is a large list of my achievements and my grades:
this year: honour roll, junior international award, chinese diligence award.
this year (more detailed):
clubs & activities:
- prefect
- yearbook commitee
- contemporary choir
- table tennis (two months, school sport)
- basketball!!
- piano class (i’m not amazing at it, so i’ve been trying to work on it so i have musical talent to show)
- art classes
- many different service activities
grades for this semester:
all A’s and above except for chinese and p.e.
(i am definitely not a star athlete)
(those classes had B’s)
but the schools i’m looking to get into are (in order of best to worst):
- thacher
- choate
- webb
- deerfield
- lawrenceville
- hotchkiss
- lake forest
- milton
- groton
- peddie
i’m in need of help, and if there’s anything i can improve on, please tell me !
Are you going into eighth grade or coming out of it? For what class are you applying?
I’m going into eighth grade, but I’m applying for the 2019-2020 school year.
Okay, so you’ll be applying for freshman class.
You have a good list of accomplishments. You also play a few sports, and even if you’re not the best at them, I think it looks really good that you stick to your commitments even if they aren’t extremely promising. In the arts categories you also have a lot of stuff and that’s cool. I can definitely see you spending your time outside of your dorm doing stuff with teachers and classmates and that’s what schools want. What you should work on is improving your two B’s as well as studying for the SSAT using your book and any other tools you can find online - YouTube videos, Khan Academy, whatever else. If there’s a math question you don’t understand, ask your teacher at school during study hall or another time.
The most important thing I would say is to make sure your essays are perfect. Your resume is what they’re looking for, but so is that of a really good amount of the applicant pool, so this isn’t gonna get you in alone. The things that really make or break a candidate’s application are the interviews, essays, and anything in which you directly express yourself to the AO’s. Think hard about what you’ll write for your essays. Make sure you feel and look confident at your interviews. And when you talk about your extracurriculars, make sure they know why you are passionate about them. Don’t say you’re doing it to have musical talent to show; delve into why you love playing music or whatever. (Don’t try to fake anything about yourself though)
I think you have a pretty good chance at any of these schools! I wish you the best of luck next year!