I really want to go to Emma Willard school for 9th grade. I am currently in 7th grade and am wondering if I would have a chance at getting in. I would be a full-paying applicant and I’ve read that helps, but I know it’s still not enough. Here are my grades:
6th grade
All A’s in all classes all year while taking all advanced classes.
7th grade
My school stopped doing real grades because of Covid, but I have an equivalent of what would be all a’s while still taking advanced classes.
I also completed through high school Spanish 3 with all A’s and will complete Spanish four next year as an 8th grader.
Extracurriculars:
I have done 6 shows with a local theater company and have taken over 12 camps and classes starting at age 7. In addition to this, I have been taking voice lessons for 2 years and have performed in 3 recitals (I don’t really know if that’s worth anything but I thought I’d add it in)
I also competed in the first lego league robotics competition last year where my team won districts and regionals for the main season. Then independently I competed at a local competition where my robot won all categories it was entered into. The next summer I was asked to do an internship at my old elementary school to teach third through fifth graders how to code and build robots.
I also don’t know if this helps, but I want to go to Emma Willard because of its rich history of educating girls. This is very important to me as someone who aspires to be a female in a male-dominated field (software engineering). I think any all-girl school would foster that kind of learning, but I’ve done research on all schools I could find and Emma was the only one that had so many clubs and classes that really showed their feminist heritage and that is something that really stuck out to me. I also want to go to Emma because I do not feel challenged where I currently am and want to be in a learning environment where everything is not so easy and where everyone is as eager to learn as I am.
Thanks for reading that whole thing, hopefully, it didn’t sound too cheesy because I promise it’s all genuine. If you have any suggestions as to what I could do to boost my application within the next few months that would be awesome. As you could probably tell Emma is where I really want to go and I am willing to work really hard to achieve that goal.
Emma is an amazing school and hope you apply!
You may want to explore their Girl Summer program - see if it’s online this year. That is a great way to learn about the school and experience many of it’s learning opportunities. The performing arts are fanatastic at Emma. Do show continued interest through the next year. Do visit, if you can. They will look for interesting girls that do interesting things - like creativity, community service, visual arts, performing arts. My kiddo did a photography portfolio of the gargoyles on their buildings one summer before applying.
Are you aware that Buffalo Seminary is mostly a day school with a small endowment? If you need financial aid they likely would not offer much financial aid if you need it. Your list might be enough, but it also might not be enough. I would strongly suggest you look into Miss Porter’s and Westover. They offer a nice amount of financial aid, and have good boarding populations.
Even if OP is FP, higher endowment is still better. It is good for the school to provide more individual resources for each child. Not to say it isn’t a great school, but if OP wants a BS experience and wants to be challenged, I think Buffalo Seminary isn’t the right thing. Miss Porters is known to be rigorous. Westover had a WISE program which is for women in STEM, and OP has a strong interest in that.
So,@Lily1 I would highly suggest you look into Westover, they have a really good STEM program for girls.
@mondaydevil is similar to you in interests- STEM, likes all-girls schools, etc. They will be a new sophomore at Westover this year- I’m sure they’d be very happy to answer questions on why they applied to Westover. I really think you should look into it, by your interests it seems like a great fit.
@Lily1
As you go forward in your process, feel free to ask me questions. We visited and strongly considered Emma, porter’s, Madeira, Westover and Chatham Hall this year, so I’m happy to share our experiences.
Clearly you are serious about your interest in attending an all-girls school, but what else do all these schools have in common? They are different sizes, different % boarding. I appreciate that you are wise enough to include schools that with higher admission rates - it does increase your chances of at least getting in somewhere. But… make sure that you really like all the schools, because what if you actually had to go to your least favorite?
Yeah, that was the one thing I was a little worried about. I looked into porters and thought it looked nice and that I would enjoy it, but I was trying to find a school with a higher acceptance rate as more of a “safe” school. But maybe I will try to look into more schools, the biggest thing for me is for it to be an all-girls school.
I wouldn’t count MPS out just because it is less safe than the others- it is actually safer than Emma in terms of acceptance rates. Also check out Westover-60% acceptance rate, incredible STEM program, I really think you’d love it.
If you want more safety schools, check out Saint Mary’s school. Their endowment isn’t huge (23m), but it’s much larger than Buffalo Seminary. They have an 85% acceptance rate and you may qualify for a merit scholarship. The campus is in a city so you won’t be in a rural area. Their STEM program isn’t huge, but they feed into NC State which has a great engineering program. Sure it isn’t as good as Emma Willard for STEM, but you should look into it.
Higher admission rate girls school – Chatham Hall is a real gem! The head of school came from Emma willard and before that was at Exeter for 8 years, so she really knows the landscape of boarding schools, and all-girls education. Our whole family just LOVED her when we went for revisits. She was one of our very favorite people we met this entire application cycle. And the girls were so incredibly warm, robotics and physics teacher both reached out and were super helpful and friendly. It was hard to turn them down! Honestly, it was hard to turn down all of the girl schools on our list. Truly, we would have been thrilled with any of them!
Chatham has actually been on and off my list for a while, I’ll probably continue to research it now. It does seem like a great school my only concern is how the campus is not very close to any cities.