I’m looking into some boarding schools this year – I’m 90% sure that I’ll apply to some but need to do some research and thinking before that. (I applied to some last year and was accepted a few but couldn’t go due to lack of financial aid as well as the covid situation.) If I were to apply, I’d be applying for repeat grade 9 probably. I think I was rejected/waitlisted to most of my schools last year because of my very awkward and bad interviews (there wasn’t even one that was mediocre), the fact that I’m an international applicant, my lack of strong EC’s (I had a few but they weren’t serious) and financial aid.
Over the past year I think I’ve developed my social skills. I lost a few EC’s but developed my interests in a few areas. I also lost what could’ve been considered a small hook last year. I used to swim competitively and could’ve made varsity based on the times I saw online (this was actually maybe the reason I was accepted to some schools). However I got a major injury and couldn’t participate in rigorous physical activity for almost a year, and I’m not emotionally prepared to go back to competitive swimming. My times have taken a huge hit due to this as well, and now, I’ll be lucky to make junior varsity by grade 12.
Due to the injury I mentioned, I wasn’t able to play sports last year, but I plan on trying out for a few at school this year. I’m in two clubs, get good grades, play two musical instruments and am in the school orchestra. Also, I enjoy math, but only have one teeny tiny award to show for it. (I don’t want to give too much info away so this is all I’ll say on my current ECs.) So yeah, as you can see, I don’t have much going for me and honestly probably won’t get in to a lot of schools that I want to go to.
I attended a summer camp at a college last year (this wasn’t anything selective I needed to apply for, by the way) and became really interested in environmental sciences. I’m really interested in pursuing this in the future, and my school doesn’t offer any science classes or programs that go in-depth into this. I know that Choate has an environmental science program but I couldn’t find much info on it online.
As for the math part, I like math and I do a lot of math competitions, but like I said, I don’t get a lot of awards and am generally bad at competition math. An especially strong math program like at Exeter isn’t really what I could benefit from, but I do want to go to a school that has a wide range of math classes at different levels. This is something my current school doesn’t have – the classes only go up to precalculus for non-seniors.
I’m really struggling to find schools that have an intensive focus on the environment except for Choate (and I also don’t have much knowledge about the program at Choate – if you know anything about it, please message me, I have a ton of questions on the program!!). What other schools that I should look at, and what are my general chances at them? What are my chances at Choate (I didn’t apply to Choate last year btw)? I don’t want to apply to an insane number of schools like I did last year since I really wore myself out over applications. (Sorry about the length of this post)