<p>Hi suze,</p>
<p>I recently got a letter from a top bs inviting me to apply. I am in 8th grade now. I took AMC10 last year and got 130. According to you, am I hooked or they are sending these letters to everyone?</p>
<p>Thank you very much.</p>
<p>Loophole, I see your point. The SAT is an indicator for only the first year of college. With regard to the ivies, they do accept some students with low SAT scores and they too graduate. Wit regard to prep school and the SSAT scoring in the 80's means you have missed alot of questions in the 9th grade pool. I believe the princeton prep review says you can get 48/60 questions and still score in the 90's. By the way, I live in Texas and boy do I understand grade inflation in the public school system. But were talking about prep schools not under performing school districts who might have grade inflation.</p>
<p>sam007, if you showed any interest at all in the school in the past they will invite you to apply. Bs's like colleges want as large a pool as possible for their stats.</p>
<p>Loophole - Agree that GPA must be good .. and "from where" has more value. I also conduct admissions interviews in my area for my college and have seen many good kids with 4.0+ from several different local public high schools not get accepted. The prep high schools clearly have more impact on admissions. To a lesser extent ... private or public elementary/middle school will also have an impact in the overall evaluation when applying to a highly competitive BS.</p>
<p>sam007 - Sorry they send materials to everyone. We have stacks of literature
from both Phillips schools. They do a great job of getting everyone to want to attend .. then they get to pick who they want. Fascinating!</p>
<p>Goaliedad, I think it was you that mentioned SSAT spread or maybe biffgnar. Anyway, if a school has an ave of 85 and 10 students admitted have 99,than the other ten would have 71. You have to believe that a school with an ave of 85 will have many 99's right? Could it be possible to have such a spread? I hope my math is correct lol</p>
<p>I think that the kids who get that low on the SSAT will have to have MAJOR hooks (maybe their parents donated a building or something) but the school won't benefit them as much as it will the kids who got higher.</p>
<p>olivia567, do you really believe that because a student does not score high on the SSAT will not benefit as much from a prep school than one who scores high? You may be putting way too much emphasis on the SSAT.</p>
<p>I don't know if I was the one who discussed spreads with you, but I would thend to guess that the distributions of SSAT scores do not look like a normal curve. Probably a longer tail on the lower end of the scale.</p>
<p>This is probably because a high "composite score" SSAT is actually difficult to get. I've corresponded with one parent whose child had a composite score a couple percentiles higher than either of the individual scores. High math low verbal or vice-versa probably yield lower composite scores, but still acceptable to good schools.</p>
<p>I don't think I worded that correctly. I meant that kids usually do better with people who have about their same level of intelligence, so that a kid who fits in better with the caliber of his school is going to benefit from it because he will be in a comfortable atmosphere. However, if you place a under-average kid (according to grades; i'm not being stereotyped) with people whom he feels "beneath", then he's not going to fit in as well, just by default. </p>
<p>Kids usually do better if they're surrounded by people with the same interests. I'm just saying it's better to match your SSAT scores with schools which have about that level of SSAT scoring. But the scores can fluctuate by 20% or more, so the best thing is to find the right fit (in general).</p>
<p>Does that make sense?</p>
<p>Goaliedad, is your child really a goalie? Because I play goalie in soccer... and I love it. :)</p>
<p>olivia567, it kind of makes sense, maybe. lol I guess we don't agree on how you measure intelligence. I don't measure it by one SSAT test. I think it's better to look at the whole package. I think most schools and upper echelon colleges will agree that it is better have a diverse community rather than a bunch of 99 ssat and 2400 sat. I also believe it to be a mistake to label an under-average kid by his/ or her SSAT score. Also note that I have a D in bs and her score was never an issue. So I'm not saying this because she had a low SSAT score.</p>
<p>Yes, Olivia, my daughter (9th grade) is an ice hockey goalie. And yes, it was her hook.</p>
<p>She also took up field hockey (as a forward) and will take up lacrosse this spring. She played varsity field hockey and even scored a goal this season, despite never having played the game before. I don't think she has seen a sport she hasn't liked -- well maybe golf as it moves too slow for her. She just hasn't seen speed golf yet! LOL</p>
<p>Lots of athletic skills are transferrable from sport to sport. So I would encourage you to try other sports as the season permits. </p>
<p>Getting back on topic, her SSAT scores were not anywhere near where some of the regulars around here report, yet she is taking honors courses this year (their judgement) and from preliminary reports, her GPA should be above 3.6 (unweighted). She just finished finals today and is flying home tonight. </p>
<p>She is not a great standardized test taker, I guess and her school knew that as well. So for all of you hanging on your test scores, don't read too much into them.</p>
<p>I see many people have a hook. Apparently, it is hard to define. For the people who know me a little better, do I have one?</p>
<p>ChaosTheory,</p>
<p>Not everyone has a hook, nor needs a hook. A Hook's (i.e. non-academic credentials) function is to improve the odds of admission and/or FA.</p>
<p>If you were to look at any school's admittees for a year, you will probably find students in the bottom quartile (as measured by test scores and GPA) are highly likely to have a hook (if I were a betting man I'd guess 90% or more of them), whereas the top quartile are less likely to have a hook.</p>
<p>And if you were to look at the acceptance rates of that bottom (academic) quartile, I'd bet that the applicants with hooks have a tremendously higher chance of admission than those without hooks. </p>
<p>With a smaller applicant pool in the top (academic) quartile, the hook still increases the odds of admission, but not nearly as much as the bottom quartile. But remember, you odds of admission are much higher in the top quartile of applicants, so there isn't as much boost necessary.</p>
<p>While you certainly have a unique perspective and approach to things academic (which will show up very well in essays and interview), I wouldn't sweat the hook thing too much. Within your quartile, your application should get more attention than most, just because you don't sound like many of the typical applicants.</p>
<p>You have to remember, they take a variety of students with a variety of test scores, not just starting at #1 (based on GPA + test scores) and counting down to the number of students they want to admit (leaving a few openings for hooks). </p>
<p>And in any group of similarly qualified applicants, they look for reasons to admit (like hooks) but not necessarily limited to hooks. They want interesting people.</p>
<p>Chaos, What are you passionate about? A sport, music, drama, etc. All schools are looking for something that you will bring to the school besides your intellectual ability. That's your hook.</p>
<p>Math. Random things. :)</p>
<p>Chaos - </p>
<p>Remind us what schools you're looking at again?
Have you interviewed yet? Try to get across in your interview and applications what you are going to offer the school community besides being a great student e.g. clubs, sports, music,arts. </p>
<p>The schools, especially the smaller ones with let's say 600 kids or less are looking to fill up those clubs, plays, orchestras, sports teams, dance productions. That means having kids who not only have the ability and independence to handle the academics in a boarding environment but who also can "build the community" - in most cases this is a kid who is multi-dimensional not just a great student. if I remember correctly, you're involved in clubs at school? What's your passion - get that across in the interview and application.</p>
<p>That is excellent information. I still have to interview for my four schools - Exeter, Andover, Hotchkiss, and Deerfield. I will be spending a lot of time on each application; hopefully I can get into one school. I live far away, so I have to schedule interviews locally.
I'm president of the science club, (participant? mathlete? member?) of Algebra II team, part of the National Art Honor Society (Art Club :)), and I'm trying to get a small weekly poetry meeting started. Hopefully, I can get some of my interests across in my application. In my spare time, I read my maths book, look up random (Physics-related XD) things, and come to CC. Also, I write poetry, and draw sci-fi\fantasy. And read various other books.</p>
<p>Focused...? :p</p>
<p>This discussion of SSAT scores has seemed to assume that all components of the test will come our roughly the same area. What if that isn't the case? What if some components, say 2 out of 3 and overall, are equivalent to school average or higher, but one is a material outlier to the downside? Anyone have thoughts or experience with this?</p>
<p>biffgnar, that happened to me. i was higher than the average for my school in two areas, but lower by about 10% in one. i don't think that it matters all that much, it's more the overall score.</p>