<p>Actually, I believe he dropped out of the public school system altogether and is now homeschooled. ;)</p>
<p>Given you are not blinded, you will always find your path. At times, it will seem as though if you are ended; your dreams, once an ethereal painting [your masterpiece, after all] -- now just shards of glass that can only hurt you further. Best to end it now? No, not quite. You still have your shards of glass and be grateful for that, for the blinded will see no painting at all. No. You must put it back together -- the painting is still there, and perhaps, rearranging it in another manner this day, you will create something yet more beautiful. And thus, all with a dream continue in this manner, breaking, rearranging, hope still in their heart, until one day they will arise and find that at last, they have created the finest painting of all. . . </p>
<p>The saddest part about what happened to Chaos is that he entered the board interested in Mercersburg because they sent him a letter recruiting him to apply. After joining the board and hearing about AESCD etc., he decided not to apply to Mercersburg in favor of the most competitive schools. I think he had good chances at Mercersburg for fa and the academic challenge he wanted. I hope others on this board will not get sucked into applying to only the top schools if opportunities at home are limited.</p>
<p>Geesh, I don't know. I always thought Chaos sounded too academic (unreal, almost....although I don't mean it disrespectfully. Just amazing to have such a super-smart kid, like that) and not down-to-earth and well-rounded enough. Almost too "specialized".
I know several kids at Exeter (because we live nearby) and none of them are over-the-top amazing like that. They are all products of nh public schools...which aren't overly amazing in themselves. Sure they had straight A's in middle school, but that's not such a feat in our weak middle schools. My son's school didn't offer honors or advanced anything (three of the kids I know went to middle school with my two sons)-everyone took the same classes. So...good grades, strong SSAT's, well rounded with some strong EC's....we know a good soccer player (not amazing, but made V as a freshman), a good (again, not amazing) dancer/artist, and my son's good friend from middle school who really had no big-time EC's. None of these people had stats that would freak out everyone here. I really think it came down to essays, recommendations, and the interview.</p>
<p>Do the ssats mean anything? People keep telling me that schools really don't consider the ssats that much, but I am a great multiple choice test taker and while I have other things going for me, I know I have a good chance of sending in really good scores.Will they help at all?</p>
<p>carker, I got a 40 overall last year (31 M, 50 V, 50 R) and was accepted to a private day school with an avg SAT score of ~1330. This year I'm applying to Andover, Groton, SPS, MX, Choate, Hotchkiss, Taft, and Deerfield. I will probably end up crossing two to three of that list, though. This year I got a 43 overall but I'm retaking in about a week and a half.</p>