Sophomore Chances

Prep School Admissions Prep School Chances
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<p>Hello! Thanks for taking a look at this. I'm an expatriate going to an American school abroad. Although I'm only in 8th grade, I wanted to get a scope on what schools I should shoot for and which ones would be more unlikely. Ideally, I'd like to get into Lawrenceville or Peddie.</p>

<p>Grades:
My school uses Standards Based Reporting so we only have a grade for our core classes and P.E. I have a 96 in Humanities, 95 in Math, 97 in Science and a 100 in P.E. For my other classes I consistently get E's and M's, the highest in a 4 tier system, although it's much harder to get to the 4th tier. There are no honors classes available. I maintain great relationships with my teachers and I'm very confident I can get great recommendation letters from them. I've also gotten high honor roll consecutively since 6th grade first semester.</p>

<p>Although I haven't taken the SSAT yet, I scored above the 95th percentile for all 3 subjects (Math, reading, and language usage.) in MAP Tests during the fall.</p>

<p>EC:</p>

<p>GPS - Global Perspectives in Science, an international science conference sponsored by CISCO. After about a month of preparation and research, we attend a culminating telepresence with high school students attending a STEM school in Georgia. I was the lead ambassador giving the opening speech and my team leader, out of 20 students who got through the application process.</p>

<p>FLL - I've been doing FLL for a few years now, it's basically competitive robotics. My team won the championship at the regional tournament between international schools as well as the research award. </p>

<p>Honor Band - I was selected to join a group of around 10 other students to travel to the host city, where we have 4 days of practice with the ensemble assembled with the best instrumentalists in Asia culminating in a final performance.</p>

<p>30 Hour Famine - I participated in the planning and in the charity event. If you haven't heard of it before, we starve ourselves for 30 hours in solidarity of the famished kids in Sub-Saharan Africa. We raise money, sort of like a marathon except instead of running, we don't eat.</p>

<p>Arts: </p>

<p>Musicals - I got chosen as the male lead in our production of the Lion King between international schools here. I also participated last year within the pit band of the school musical and plan to audition this year for the spring musical. </p>

<p>Acapella Choir - Through audition, 20 out of the 40-50 kids who auditioned were chosen to be part of the middle school coed Acapella Choir. It starts after the 2nd semester commences. </p>

<p>Instruments - I've played the clarinet for 3 years now as first chair in the Senior band, piano since I was 5 except it was mostly on and off after I turned 12. I don't play competitively but play at a fairly decent level. I've also played the guitar for the period of a few months, mainly recreationly. Finally, I've been doing vocals for almost a year now after discovering my fairly gifted voice ;) </p>

<p>I played volleyball last year and plan to again this year as well as softball later this year. (We don't have baseball in middle school) Both are after school as part of my schools sports program. </p>

<p>Thanks again! I greatly appreciate any kind of advice or suggestions.</p>

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<p>Bump, because any advice would be helpful :D</p>

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<p>The country u are residing in might help a little, if the school does not presently have a student from there. If u are residing in China or SKorea, get your parents to move to a more obscure country.</p>

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<p>Haha I don’t think I can move to another country now, it’s a little bit too late. Right now, I just wanna know what kind of schools I have the best chances at.</p>

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<p>There’s no way anyone can gauge what school is a good fit for you without SSAT scores. It would be good to take the SSAT now, for 2 reasons:</p>

<p>1) as a diagnostic test to see what areas you need to work on. Keep in mind though that most schools will want you to take the test in the fall for it to count. </p>

<p>2) to determine what is a realistic school to be admitted into. You have no idea how many kids in the Chances boards ask: “I scored 40% on the SSAT, but I had a really good interview. What are my chances of getting into Andover?” [eye-roll…]<br>
You can check what the schools’ avg SSAT scores are in BoardingSchoolReview.com. </p>

<p>Check the SSAT website for overseas test locations & dates.</p>

<p>My biggest tip as an expat parent: In the next admissions cycle this fall, make sure you go to visit the schools. Even if the schools offer overseas interviews, go and interview on campus. It will make a big difference in how seriously you are regarded as an int’l applicant. </p>

<p>Continue on as you are doing now-- you’re doing well in school and in ECs. Stick around in this forum and see what happens on March 10th: REALITY CHECK day for a lot of kids who over-reached.</p>

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<p>Thanks, I’m probably taking a diagnostic within the next few weeks and the actual test either during the summer or winter of this year. I’ll definitely being visiting this summer or winter as well. </p>

<p>Regarding March 10th, I have a handful of friends who are all applying to boarding schools so I’m anxious to find out where they get into as well, especially those that only applied to schools like Andover, Exeter and Choate.</p>

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<p>Other tip: Don’t limit yourself to looking at only a handful of schools whose only reason for being grouped together is that their first initials happen to conveniently make up some stupid acronym…</p>