PA, PEA and Choate Chances?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Chances
1

Hey everyone, I am an 8th grader residing in Manhattan applying to PA, PEA and Choate and would love to get opinions from others about my chances for acceptance. To be clear, I am applying to many independent day schools in the New York area as well, so I am not concerned about casting a ‘wide net’, these are schools I would love to go to but I am applying knowing that they are prestigious schools.

Grades:
Math - A
Humanities - A
Spanish - A-
Science - A-

Courses:
Math - Algebra 2/Trig (Honors)
Humanities - U.S. History
Spanish - Intermediate Beginner (Honors)
Science - Chemistry

Test Scores: Have not taken ISEE yet, expecting an average of 8

Recs: Very good rec from Humanities teacher, average rec from Math teacher

EC’s:
(My home country)'s Chess Youth National Team
6th and 11th at U.S. Youth Chess National Tournament
Select Travel Baseball Team
Tri-Varsity athlete at school

Academic Awards:
Kangaroo Math top 10 nationally 2015 and 2016

My EC’s and Academic Awards and such are very specific so I prefer to leave them like this, but thank you everyone in advance for the help!

2

Are you Chinese? Do you need financial aid?

3

I’m Japanese and I will not need financial aid.

4

Forgot to mention that I am not an American citizen but have been living in NYC since I was 3 years old. Does being an immigrant help or hurt my chances?

5

Being Japanese makes you part of an over represented applicant pool and being an immigrant really only matters if you are also an URM.

6

But will my EC’s make up for it? I’m hoping that the Chess National Team will be a hook for the schools, as well as the tri-varsity/baseball

7

What kind of a school are you coming from in NYC?

8

A private day school, a major plus is that PA, PEA and Choate admissions reps came to visit the school recently.

9

You are applying out of NYC privates with dozens of other kids: k-8/9s and kids who want to try something different. Its a tough pool. You need to apply to a wider variety of schools. The fact that they came to your school means nothing-they go all over the country looking for needles in haystacks

10

@Center, I’m applying to a dozen schools in total, these are just the three boarding schools on my list; The other 9 on my list are all day schools.

11

@rukthecook I understood that-I meant a wider variety of BS, IF you want to have a strong chance of having a BS option…make sense?

12

If you’re coming from a private NYC K-9 school, your school counselor will know your chances much better than we will. They will advocate for you - or not - depending on where other kids from your school are applying. If everyone wants to go to Trinity for example, your counselor won’t support all of those applicants equally. Make sure that your counselor knows what your top 3-5 choices are & why. They should be able to tell you if maybe one or two of those aren’t going to happen for you. Honestly, I’d be concerned about an “average” recommendation from your Math teacher - why is that and can you speak to him/her to improve the situation? Also, be sure to emphasize your community involvement - private schools offer a lot of opportunities to be involved beyond sports, and boarding schools want to see this. Remember that you will be compared to your peers - both from your school and other private schools in NYC. So do a little PR for yourself with your Math teacher and your counselor. Ask them frankly where they may see a weakness in your application & try to work on that. And again, be very clear about your top 3 or so choices.

13

Do you have dual-citizenship? Or do you just have Japanese or American passport?

14

@altablue, I am a Japanese citizen with only a Japanese passport, do my chances increase/decrease with this?