The admission officers we talked generally offered my d to repeat 8th grade when it was offered, even though she had taken many college courses. Many foreign students come to U.S. after finishing 9th grade because their high school starts from 10th, and choose to repeat 9th anyway. Because their school year start with Spring, they loose another 6 months in transition and are often 1.5~2 years older.
What do you feel about being close to 20 at graduation? Does it matter? It may even offer additional opportunities as many prestigious Summer programs have minimum age requirements for 16 or 15. You won’t get any disadvantage in applying college or jobs because you are 1~2 years older than the others.
If you get your individual SSAT scores > 85th percentile you should be good for just about every school. Sounds like the isolated math score < 80th percentile really caused concerns at Exeter. And rightly so. The math curriculums at most of these boarding schools are quite tough. They want to make sure you can handle the work once you arrive.
Would you want to be in a situation where you were struggling all the time? If you don’t manage to get your SSAT math score up, then this is a question that you’ll need to deeply think about. There is nothing wrong with having a lower SSAT score, just keep in mind that it will make it more difficult for you to stand out when it comes time to apply for college.
Correction: You need to choose “Trigonometry” course instead of “Algebra 2” or :Algebra 2 with Trigonometry" to have that “Algebra and Geometry Review (98 topics)” section.
Sorry for the mistake. If you have already started your trial, you can simply get another trial with a different email address.
BTW, it just occurred to me that, if you repeat 9th, then you can volunteer for the next presidential election Summer after 11th grade, and use that as an EC for college admission.
That is true @SculptorDad and @sgopal2 it’s not that I’m bad at math, I understand it. However, I’m just a terrible test-taker anyway, but especially when it comes to math
You seem like a very smart student. So is my daughter. And the same thing happened to us as well.
I taught her algebra when she was 9 and she has exceptional understanding. She passed highschool proficiency exam at 10, and cleared algebra II requirement for her college physics course with a placement exam last Summer, although barely at the second trial.
She still had been a terrible test taker for math, and I think I know why; The way her brain was wired made her rather slow and inaccurate in arithmetic. It gets worse because this also makes math practice less enjoyable and it had been a death spiral.
But, with recent maturing of her brain and heavy practices with the right material, out of necessity as she decided to stop homeschooling and go to a boarding school, she overcame that problem sufficiently enough.