How will grades from 2020 be viewed?

This! My kiddo applied initially kind of on a whim- we had no idea what we were doing (hadn’t joined this forum), was applying as a Jr., requesting FA and to only 3 “big name” schools. At first she truly thought she would be fine if she didn’t get in. But as the process goes on you become more and more invested and attached to a school or schools. By March 10 she would have been devastated not to have gotten in. Luckily she defied the odds and has a place to go. Don’t just look at need blind, huge endowment schools, they also have the most applicants and lowest odds.

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Many schools offer generous financial aid, it is a misnomer that the schools you listed are necessarily the most generous. What these schools CAN do is spend a lot on financial aid AND capital improvements AND other resources - many schools cannot do all three to the same degree.

“Slightly” less famous boarding schools will often go after a high achieving student, like you, by using financial aid (assuming your family qualifies) as a recruitment tool. This assumes they believe you are genuinely interested in their school.

Haha. That describes no one here.

Apply to more schools.
Consider repeating a grade.
And if you need financial aid, add double the schools unless you have such a degree of insider information that you can fill Groton’s need for an origami linguist knife thrower or Exeter’s need for an AMC 10 Pilates clown and you and you alone can fill this niche. The best candidates will fill both.

Nobody cares about your B. But everything else will matter.

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I strongly caution you against trying to explain a 92 as it is likely to backfire on you and make interviewers/application readers think you are so grade fixated that you cannot survive in the schools you have listed. Take @Golfgr8 's joke about Mr 89 to heart. If you look at the grade distribution of some of the schools you have listed you will see that they tend to fall around 85-89. At Groton a tiny portion of the class will have a cumulative average over a 92. Less than 10% of the class. Understand what that means and how trying to explain a 92 in one class will look to people who live in that world.

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Sometimes I think schools need a course slope and handicap system like they have in golf :golf: :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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