Chance me for BS and private schools?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Chances
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Wassup all,

I’m Anna, Asian American female, no FA, applying for 9th, boarding for all the BS, self explanatory for day schools

Schools: L’ville, Choate, Exeter, Andover, Peddie, Newark Academy, Trinity School, Riverdale country day

NOTE: i am aware im being very ambitious, I am not adding or deleting any schools from my list because I already go to a good private school that I can fall back on.

stats:

Academics (ew):
Honor roll w/ distinction 7 times in a row
7th gpa: 98.47
6th gpa: 97.2
8th tri 1: around 96.5?

SSAT 2250 (93%) im retaking 3 more times
Q:86
R:92
V:94

Character snapshot:
Everything is demonstrating except for social awareness and teamwork, which is developing

Performing Arts:

Instrumental studies: (submitting videos)

Euphonium, 4 years
-regionals 2nd chair (best 7th grade euphoniumist in my region hehe)
-1st chair wind ensemble
-1st chair jazz band
^won Music in the Parks festival best junior high jazz band, superior, 1st place
-accepted into stokes music camp
-played with a professional brass quintet in a concert in nyc
-helped out my schools symphonic band

Trombone, 1 year
-played with professionals in a volunteer orchestra (one of the only 2 middle schoolers in the orchestra)
-played in my schools jazz band (switch between t-bone and euphonium)

Baritone Horn and trumpet, 2 years
-fiddled around w/ it for funs lol

other instrument stuff:
-Played at senior center
-started my own jazz quintet with friends
-improvised and created new ways to play the euphonium in a jazz context (euphonium is not a jazz instrument, kinda like a violin in a rock band)

Vocal/choir, 5 years:
-3rd part, tenor (i have a deep voice lol)
-Cantores (the name of my school’s choir)
-select vocal ensemble
^won overall best junior high choir, 1st place superior, at music in the parks

Visual arts:

Animation/film:
-Video production elective in my school, (might submit a short film that I am working on)
-contributed an animation/film, won 1st place in my schools upper school indie film festival (only middle schooler)
-animation, 2 years

Graphic design:
-designed my school’s quizbowl tee for 2 years in a row
-designed my schools swim sweatshirt
-designing my schools house emblem (we have a house system)

Other art stuff:
-Submitting a concentrated art portfolio
-fashion design (submitting portfolio)
-digital art, 7 years
-traditional art, 5 years

Athletics:

girls tennis team: (sending a video)
-1st doubles, captain
-4 years

Swimming:
-3 years

Cheer:
-1 year

Track:
-3 years

Leadership:

Student council:
-treasurer
-2 years

Student ambassador/tour guide:

  • i basically just lead tours before prospective students interviews and i do open houses at my school

Random stuff:

Cum Laude award in National Latin Exam
Took Spanish for 5 years before
Lawrenceville Summer Scholars
West Point CLD STEM camp (free summer camp that you have to apply for)
Accepted into stokes music camp at Montclair university
Made 1500$ usd from the game Roblox
invested in stocks
Started a small resaling business on eBay
Quizbowl team 2 years

Essays:

although it varies because different prompts, I usually tell these main stories:

  • my tennis journey with a leg bone condition and how it affected me

  • How i turned me playing Roblox, into a business and branched out to investing and stuff

  • Playing a euphonium, a concert band instrument in a jazz band and improvising and creating new ways to play euphonium (think violin in a rock band)

  • how i was inspired by my school’s cheer team having cheer sweatshirts and decided to design swim sweatshirts. (Talking about working w/ my schools administration and coaches)

Interviews:

Done all my interviews already except Peddie and trinity, I think they went pretty well.

does not include the parent Portions
Exeter: around 70 minutes (we really clicked)
Andover: around 85 minutes
L’ville: 30 minutes (interviewer was very surprised about the knowledge I had about L’ville)
Choate: 25 minutes (online interview, didnt click as well but I think I still did good)
Riverdale: 25 minutes (online too)
Newark academy: 40 minutes, the interviewer was so nice and we clicked so well, she made me hot chocolate and gave me a pin

Recommendations:

Really good, I go to a small school with around 400 kids in my school, and I have been attending for 10 years so my teachers know me well

Thank u for reading this!!!

If your also applying to any of these schools and wanna help eachother out, message me your contacts

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You have a good list so I think you’ll get in somewhere. My Asian American girl coming from a good nyc day school was WL at choate (the only overlap). You have more activities than she did and better test scores. It sounds like you’ve done your best! Good luck!!
ps-i also love shibas!!

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How are you taking the SSAT 3 more times? I thought the limit was 2 per EMA? And why waste the money 3 more times, just put it towards a great prep program instead. It may be a red flag to schools seeing a high achieving score trying to be bested with little room for besting that many times.

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schools can see scores that i don’t submit??? :skull: i got a 44% before the 93… uhoh…

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aw thank u!! shibas are certainly the best dog breed, heh…

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They better not be able to! Everything on the SSAT website makes it seem like you get to choose which test dates to submit scores from and which to withhold. Hopefully someone else can confirm for us both that only the score dates a student selects will be sent!

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They only see the scores you submit

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But if you need to submit multiple test dates for superscoring, they will see all that you submit.

The test administrator also limits the number of times you can take the test.

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Your scores are high enough. Don’t waste you time retaking it again.

If you want to improve your application, focus on your essays and volunteer work.

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Exactly - that’s what I said - they only see the scores you submit

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thank you! I am wondering how much community service matters. What kind of volunteer work do you think actually benefits people in need? I am thinking of my band and I going to senior centers and maybe give the seniors a little concert to cheer them up. maybe my band can play some really fun songs and if we feeling spicy, maybe an arrangement of pink floyd! fun stuff haha. I think I only have around 35 volunteers hours over 2 years… (yikes)!

volunteer i’ve done so far:

taught kids english online in wuhan china during covid lockdown

cleaned up beaches

played at an volunteer orchestra

played at a senior center

organized my house (school’s house system) to donate 800 pairs of socks to a sock drive (this gives no hours tho lol i did it because why not)

p.s.

are those hens in your pfp? I love hens! i have 4 backyard chickens and they are the cutest animals ever!!!

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the limit is 2 online, and 3 in person i think, don’t qoute me on that haha. so in total per ema you can take 5. thanks for the concern! (:

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The profiles of the students on this forum these days amaze me. Back when I applied (2018), this would get you auto-admitted anywhere.

Don’t freak out about miniscule things like “what specific kind of community service is best”—as long as your heart is in it, it’s golden.

That’s really the big thing—is your heart in your essays? Your interviews? If so, you’ll have a great chance at any school, no matter how selective.

Good luck, and if you have any questions about Lawrenceville, feel free to reach out!

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what really??? l’ville is my favorite school so far haha. i did the summer scholars there. the teachers there were so funny and nice! i was in hamill house during the summer camp so go big blue!

one thing i noticed is that there is only four core academic classes in each day during summer scholars, is this what the real school is like? how much freetime/study halls do you get usually? also, how often do you guys have house activities/olympics? how do people from other houses get along with each-other? do you change houses every year?

as you might be able to tell… i like l’ville haha, during my interviews i mentioned something and my interviewer said she never heard an applicant mention about this program or something :skull:

since you applied in 2018, i assume your a senior. Good luck with college applications!

p.s:

just curious, what house are you in?

also, thoughts on Kennedy house?

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For our family, we always encourage our kids to do community service that is an extension of something they love or are passionate about, to share what they love with others as service.

For example, my oldest son (graduated high school in 2018), he loved cars and car repair so he volunteered at a man’s house every weekend, fixing cars for community members that couldn’t afford a traditional garage. This man had transformed his barn into a full-scale service bay, with pneumatic lifts and everything!

My next kid loved all things tech and online streaming, etc. He volunteered as an admin/moderator for a couple of global Discord servers as well as being a beta tester for Discord. When he was a junior in high school, he was selected as an alpha tester for Discord as well (and even found an Easter egg in their code which was a file that basically said “if you find this, please contact **** in Human Resources about working for Discord”!).

So, basically take what you love and see how you can turn it into service for others or extend a passion into service. That way you will enjoy what you are doing and that excitement will come through when you talk about or write about your service.

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Always love to hear that :slight_smile:

Freshmen in the fall, juniors, and seniors take five classes per term; freshman winter/spring and sophomore year, you take six. Usually freshman through junior year, you take one of each “core” class (English, math, science, history, language), with the sixth one being art/music/theater/religion/philosophy, while senior year there’s a lot more flexibility; right now, I’m taking two Englishes and no language, while last term I took two histories and no English, for example.

Free periods are 4 hours per week; lunch is usually around an hour and a half; after sports (which end 5pm-ish), you’re fully free until check-in at 8pm; study hall is from 8-10, with lights out at 10:30 for freshmen and 11:15 for sophomores/juniors. (Seniors have 9pm check in, no study hall, and no lights out, although they’re expected to be quiet and in their rooms from midnight onwards). Wednesday and Saturday classes end at noon; personally, I like having a free period on Saturday and not doing interscholastic sports, because it means that I can basically treat Friday evenings like a weekend, too.

Olympics is once a year (much to the chagrin of the three school presidential candidates in a row who have promised spring olympics…), but House activities are a lot more common. Invite-a-Houses, where two Houses hang out together from 10pm to 1am-ish on a Saturday night, typically happen twice a term per House, while Invite-a-Friends, which are more exclusive events where you can invite a friend from another House to come over (e.g. Cleve Italian Night, Wood Tea, Club Stan, Kirvalentines) are typically once or twice a year per House, and can happen any time during the week. Other House bonding events include going up to the Ropes Course (one Sunday morning per year), going to Six Flags together as a House, going to laser tag together as a House, and going to paintball together as a House.

I hung out in multiple Houses during my time in the Circle, and it never posed much of a problem to me; just get your friend to let you in. Back when Irwin was the dining hall (Irwin had “pods,” aka a different dining room for each House), I would usually just go eat in a different House’s pod if I wanted to hang out with a different group of people during a given meal, and it wasn’t like they would question why you were there or try to kick you out—anyone is welcome in any pod. House rivalries really only get intense when making Cleve jokes or during House Olympics.

Freshman year you live in Lower with every other freshman (one building per gender), sophomore and junior year you live in the same Circle (Boys) or Crescent (Girls) House, senior year you either prefect in Lower/your Circle/Crescent House or go to senior housing, which is like Lower in that the entire grade is together.

Love to hear it! It’s a wonderful school!

I have to ask, which program? I’m curious…

Thank you!!! Good luck to you, too!

None, because I’m a senior :slight_smile: (in all seriousness, it’s a small enough cohort that I’d rather not mention it on a public forum)

It’s a nice building; it has this really epic-looking staircase in the entryway, and its library is quite cozy. The pockets keep falling out of the pool table, though, and there’s no vending machine. Anyways, House cultures change super fast due to how quickly students cycle through—I sometimes go back to my old Circle House, and the vibe is basically unrecognizable from what it was back when I was there. Whatever I could tell you about Kennedy is already outdated, and it’ll be doubly so by the time you enter the House system.

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Hi, I would just like to say thank you for the advice of applying what I am passionate about into community service! :slight_smile:

as a little update:

The jazz quintet that I started with my friends, performed at senior centers. I called a bunch of senior centers to ask if they would like a little holiday performance from us. I not just have a place to show off our awesome music, but hopefully uplift some of the elders day. Thank you so much for the idea. it really meant a lot to me haha.

happy holidays!

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omg I’m applynig to Riverdale, choate, phillipsacademys as well <3
can we chat on discord and help each other out?

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I’d love to! Aux#1234

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#1234?
wait send it in private message so others wont see it