Hi, I’m in 7th grade and just got my middle level SSAT scores. I got:
A total of: 1962 (61st percentile)
A reding score of: 602 (24th percentile)
A math score of: 710 (99th percentile)
I also take part in competitive figure staking and swimming, and play in a orchestra. I am in my school’s math counts team, and have been doing Girl Scouts since kindergarten, accomplishing about 200 hours of community service a year.
Do you think I can get into my dream high schools(Cate school, Phillips academy, Choate)?
With those scores? Unlikely.
And since none of those schools offers figure skating as a sport, you (and your parents) will need to make some hard decisions about whether that will be important for you going forward, since it is difficult, if not impossible, to pursue sports outside of the school environment.
You will need to take the upper level SSAT which I believe are considered “harder” since you will be the youngest grade taking them. A 7th grader is the oldest grade taking the mid level SSAT so you should be at an advantage.
You will need to bring your reading/verbal scores up significantly but great job on the math!
Grades and recommendations + essays will be very important for your applications but your ECs look good. Keep up the good work.
FYI you will likely need to give up figure skating unless you can find a way to continue at school which will be very complicated as a boarding student. Are you a strong competitive swimmer? Do those schools have swim teams that might want you for their teams?
Thanks! I believe I am a fairly decent swimmer. I’ve gone to 4 different states for swimming competitions, and I agree that my reading score wasn’t the best… I don’t know how hard the high level ssat is, but I’m sure I can spend most of my time on studying the reading section. Also, I was wondering if any schools value other languages, because I can speak 3 other languages (Spanish, Korean and Japanese)at a fluent level, and 2 (French and German) at a intermediate level.
Others might know more but speaking additional languages isn’t that big a deal at the top schools. Many of the international kids speak several languages. It might be an interesting conversation point in an interview but probably won’t weigh heavily on the scales.
Concentrate on your grades. Prep for the ssat. Get to know your 8th grade teachers quickly next year so they can write great recs for you.
If you placed in those swimming competitions you should certainly explore swimming at these schools. Fill out athletic interest forms when you schedule your interviews next year. Schedule your interview/tour early. Do not wait till the rest of your application is done or anything like that.
Yup. It’s a given for international applicants. For the rest, simply knowing other languages, while unique compared to American students, is just not a wow factor.