My son is applying for Lakeside in Seattle. They somehow only ask quite abstract information about kids; the phone interview he had, I don’t really know if they know him better or worse afterwards. It is kind of sad that a very lively young man is represented by a list of bullets. But here we are:
SSAT, 2388 (99%), with next to none preparation (school doesn't know)
Premier level soccer player. Tried out but didn't make Olympic Development Program (do they care to evaluate the level kids play at?)
top 10 in the league (8 schools) in XC
Many years of rec experience in baseball and basketball. He forgot to mention multiple sometimes hard-earned championships.
Quite some experience but nothing to show about: violin, guitar, and painting.
He shoots movies whenever possible; quality work for his age. I put in a link to a funny movie he made about himself and thought it would be the best shot that he had to distinguish himself from other crazily good applicants. (Will school look at it at all?)
He forgot to put in anything academic; there doesn't seem to be places in the application form for those either (metro level recognition in math, spelling bee, etc); I don't think it matters that much though.
Robotics recognition at state level.
Serious boy scout. Very much into outdoor activities. Recognition at national leadership training camp.
Volunteer hours: 35+ last year.
Essay he talks about our cat. Not sure why that is significant though.
Another thing that I worry, to a lesser degree, is whether the school may think he is another overworked tiger cub kid. He is not but there is not much we can do about stereotypes I guess.
@ruinedlegend Hi there, my daughter (in 8th grade) is also applying for Lakeside School (into 9th grade) and we’re quite anxious! May I ask, just out of curiosity, what grade is your son in?
Your son’s SSAT score is incredible; I’ve read online that many kids only excel in one area or the other (like math or verbal) and therefore not do very well on the SSAT. 99% means that he did better than 99% of average scores of the kids who took the SSAT in the past 3 years, so that’s good in my opinion. I also know that 92%+ is the recommended score for applying to Lakeside, so he probably has a good chance when considering his scores.
I think the fact that he plays sports and is also involved in the arts that he isn’t just a stereotypical honor roll student who gets good grades and will be beneficial for him. His volunteer hours are amazing as well, so experience-wise, he’s pretty well set.
And about the essay, that’s a good point, I don’t know if talking about his cat was really a good thing; it might show that he cares about other things outside of schoolwork, but schools like Lakeside probably want to see that students like to challenge themselves and have a motivation for learning too, so I’m not sure if they were able to see that in him.
Good luck to your son! I would love to talk to you here about private school admissions and I’m looking forward to hearing back from you!
Oh, and if your son is applying to the middle school (5th-8th grade) he has a better chance because there is less competition and more spots available.
Thx for the evaluation. It helps in multiple ways. I started to use this forum yesterday and somehow lost my first post. In rushing a second one i missed some info. Yes, we, too, are eighth graders applying for the ninth grade. Thank you sharing that you are a little anxious too. Best luck to u and ur daughter.
After going through the posts in this forum, I realized that Lakeside is.just doing the norm in terms of their app process. Pity we didn’t do a lot of research. We only started the process in Dec. I guess that showed in the way his essay was written. I totally agree with u on the essay part. Since there isnt much he can do about it now. Let’s just hope he had fun talking about his cat.
Btw, is it even ok to put a web link in parent statement? Anyway, the result is coming out in two weeks. Wish her the best.
@angelshreave I tried to reflect on what my “anxiety” is about and where it comes from. At least some of it I think is related to the fact there are so many really excellent kids out there. There is no practical way to tell them apart. As a result, our children are subject to a significant degree of randomness: the AO’s have to make a difference based on tiny, often partial, bits of information. But the reality is, even that a kid did something truly “standing out”, like acing an interview, or having a lot of service hours, might not be a good indicator of their future growth, or performance at school. Nobel laureate in Economics Kahneman pointed out the ineffectiveness of even day long interviews from a statistics pov. And in the situation that he studied, there were not a large pool of equally qualified candidates as what we have now.
The thoughts that (I don’t know your situation) our children are entered for a lottery because of the high level of competition is not really more appeasing. But I plan to sleep on it now. //Whew.
@ruinedlegend Lakeside is my daughter’s dream school and I am quite scared of how she will react if she happens to not be accepted. Honestly, I think if Lakeside just looked at SSAT scores for admission, our kids will probably both get in haha. But I just don’t know how they pick applicants and how factors are involved. My daughter didn’t get the best teachers this year, so teacher recommendations might be a factor as well. As for report card grades and comments, my daughter is pretty well set, but I’m afraid that the admission team might only think of my daughter as a stereotypical Asian student who plays instruments and only gets good grades; I hope they didn’t get that impression of her as she is a self-motivated student. So…13 days left! Is your son applying to any other schools?
And as for the parent statement, I don’t really know. My daughter has never applied to a private school, so I have never had to write a parent statement, and sometimes I wonder if my daughter won’t get in because my parent statement wasn’t quite what the admissions team was looking for. What was the web link about? If it was something that the team would’ve needed to see when looking at your son, then maybe it was a good thing?
@angelshreave Oh, the web link is a short film my son made. Parental bias would say that it is creative and of relatively high quality in terms of story telling, shooting and editing. More importantly it shows him as a person.
@ruinedlegend Hey, I was talking to my daughter today and she has a friend who has multiple friends that go to Lakeside. Apparently Lakeside likes to promote diversity and often is more open to minority groups such as African-Americans or people who are Muslim, to “mix things up” and not be favorable to a certain race. Just something that popped up from an insider at Lakeside and wanted to mention this.
@angelshreave I guess with limited resource, maintaining diversity is not as easy. But this is what all good schools do. It contributes to the overall good of this country. On a related note, they also tend to pick only a few from the same school, too, I was told.
Hi! I’m a rising senior at Lakeside and I just wanted to say congratulations! I got into the school in 5th grade, so the application process was definitely different for me as a ten-year-old, but I remember the stress and waiting. Lakeside is challenging, but it’s so, so rewarding. Everyone wants to help you succeed, and there are so many amazing opportunities.
Congrats!
-Lakeside class of '18
@oknujm There generally is a fair amount of pressure, but I’ve found it’s mostly students comparing themselves to other students. All of the teachers are absolutely fantastic at trying to make sure they don’t stress us out to much, but of course it’s inevitable that there will be times (usually the week before a break) where you have a major assignment or test in all of your classes, which can get quite stressful. As long as you manage your time well, though, it’s totally doable. They also try to make sure to give you work that’s not just busy work, rather work that makes you think and helps you grow as a student. My chem teacher, for instance, only gives us one or two homework assignments per week, but I am learning so much in the class.
Hope this helped!