SSAT scores vs Grades

Prep School Admissions Prep School Cafe
1

<p>Hi, I'm Thomas and i'm applying for PEA. I aced the SSAT with 800 800 800 (and obviously 99th percentile) but my gpa is quite low (around 3.0). Although i go to the most prestigious school on the west coast. <a href="http://www.lakesideschool.org/ftpimages/252/download/ProfileLakeside-Final%202010-2011.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.lakesideschool.org/ftpimages/252/download/ProfileLakeside-Final%202010-2011.pdf&lt;/a>
There's a profile, so as you can see, a 3.0 is not that bad. I was wondering what Exeter would think of that, and if you had any helpful tips or insight. Thanks for all your help!</p>

<p>Other highlights:
Low D-I, major D-II golf scholarship prospect
Extremely talented at math (estimate top 50 in nation for my grade)
Potential D-II swimmer (walk-on)
2250 on SAT
Gold medal on national latin exam</p>

2

<p>what year are you? but regardless if those are your ssat scores then they will definitely overlook your grades</p>

3

<p>Are you in high school, because if I can remember correctly you don’t start getting medals on the NLE until eighth grade. I guess they might overlook your grades, but then again grades are an accurate representation on how much effort you put into your schoolwork. Someone with your test scores should have a fairly high GPA, so they might view this as you not putting enough effort into school, and if you go to a boarding school, you need to put a lot of effort into the schooling. You also don’t have enough EC to cross the bad grades off, Exeter (I’m assuming that’s what you mean by PEA) might accept you, but it’s not really a definite.</p>

4

<p>i’m in 9th grade and i got a gold medal last year. My grades fell for a number of reasons: first, i put about 6 hours of day into golf, swimming, and math, which doesnt leave much time for school. I do work very hard at school, but the teachers grade very difficult.</p>

5

<p>They will probably look at you as being a lazy student, but you never know with AO’s</p>

6

<p>i really don’t think any school will look at you as a lazy student. just from what you’ve said here, you already have an impressive and diverse list of accomplishments which contradict any notion of laziness. in addition, anectodally we’ve heard that exeter gives more weight to the ssat than most other schools. i’d guess you’ll be a strong candidate. good luck with your pursuits! you’ll love exeter if you make it there.</p>