If I got four Cs last year and all As this year, will I be able to possibly still get into Phillips Exeter/Andover? My ssat score is on the 90th percentile and I play football 5 hours per week for 6 years and badminton for 5 hours per week for 5 years
4 Cs does not look good but all As with a 90th SSAT would show you have potential. You would need to craft some reasoning in your essays or interview about what caused you to turn your academics around. It could be a good story if you have one. Are you looking to play football at prep school? Have you contacted coaches? What was 6th grade like for scores? We’d need more of your resume/background to give you a fair response. Consider your question incomplete at the moment.
Your chances are very low.
Is there an explanation for the four Cs such as an illness or family tragedy or displacement due to a natural disaster ? Language barrier ? Undiagnosed malady or learning disability ?
In which courses did you receive Cs ?
I have been told that schools don’t like low grades and high scores. To them it indicates that you aren’t a disciplined student and that won’t do well at elite schools. So, you need to address the grade discrepancy.
How well do you play football? Frankly the number of hours you put in is far less important than how good you are. If you will make varsity as a 9th grader then I’d say get in touch with the coaches and that could give you a solid chance.
Imo your essays need to be excellent and compelling to make up for the grades.
Sorry, I went back and re read, 5 hours of a sport per week is not a lot. 10 per week is average for serious athletes. So I don’t think that is going to impress people as a great commitment. Again if you’re really good that’s a different story.
And OP’s “football” may be our “soccer”.
Badminton is not important to US schools. Squash is big, however, at some prep schools & colleges.
Yeah, I interpreted it that the OP is an international applicant, which will make chances even lower.
Also I was wondering if I could use to my advantage that I’m doing all three sciences? Of course not with my grades last year but with the A’s that I have gotten this year because I heard that in the US most people do a single science each year.
So last year in 9th grade I moved to another country and I’m used to moving, but that time I found it much harder to fit in. I got bullied really badly and it affected my mental health and generally it was just the worst experience of my life so grades were my least priority. After getting my final grades and noticing how much my grades had dropped from the year before, I decided that I wanted a change - a second chance actually. I ended up changing schools and now I’m repeating 9th grade and so far I’ve been doing good and getting all A’s in my classes.
My grades last year were A+ in business, A in English, B in maths, C in bio, chem, physics, and history.
I’m actually really good and I don’t practice a lot because I want to make sure I give a 100% to my grades this year however during the summer I went up to 21-23 hours per week.
Yeah I meant your “soccer.” What about volleyball and dance?
Yeah, true but is that so? So its a lie when Phillips claims it does not discriminate students based on nationality?
They do not discriminate amongst international applicants’ nationalities, but American applicants will always have precedence, all other things being equal (which they never are).
No
You get no bonus points simply for attending a school with a different curriculum. While US students typically study one science per year, basically all students following a British system will have bio/chem/physics each year leading up to GCSEs.