What I wish I had known

Prep School Admissions
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On reflection of my high school application, there’s some things which I would like to share so that other people won’t have the same mistake.

Just to introduce myself, I’m a biracial (Taiwanese and Caucasian) girl sophomore at Concord Academy with no financial aid. I applied to Lawrence Academy, Concord Academy, Middlesex, Groton, and Phillips Andover. I was waitlisted at Groton and rejected from PA.

My application at the time:
9 years of piano (I had won 3rd at districts and was level 8 in RCM, which is essentially a Usa-Canadian testing program for music)
4 years of cello, played with my school orchestra
9 years of figure skating, Freestyle 3, won 4th at ISI worlds in like 2018? I forget now
3 years sailing, won 2nd in a regatta
3 years at the Lions Club
President of my class
Misc academic awards
2nd place for regional science fair
I was 5ft 10 at the time, so I made it clear that I was looking to start crew (rowing) as a sport.
97% percentile on the SSAT

I knew that my teacher recommendations were all glowing, as I was essentially a model straight A student for all of middle school.

The one thing my application lacked on paper was sports. High schools really look for a team sport that you do. Unfortunately for me, figure skating was not competitive enough to merit any favors in my application and piano and cello as a Asian student are really common.

the thing that is most important are your essays. I now am on the other side of the application process so I listen in on the conversations that the seniors who help read through the essays say, and it really seems to be the fact that they care about what you write, not how you write. A mistake I made was writing about COVID and my experience with it for the PA essay. I applied 2022, so I assume everyone wrote about that so I was just a dime a dozen. You have to stand out by making a interesting hook in your essay.

Also, once you get into school, think about what’s the best fit for you. One of my friends turned down Nobels to go to CA, and another one of my friends turned down Phillips Andover. I turned down Middlesex. You should always keep in mind what school is the best fit for you, not what school ranks the highest on Niche.

Hope this helps
M

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I agree and disagree with this point. Yes, the actual content and self-reflection in your essay is more important than the flowery language or intricate grammatical structures that you use. But a good application essay can be about pretty much anything, as long as you are reflective enough.

Don’t think about a personal statement as “an essay about something.” Think of it as “an essay about you”—the theme that it uses, whether that be Covid, your favorite hobby, or how you learned to ride a bike, is merely the vehicle through which you’re talking about yourself. If you can make that “something” into a window into your mind, then your essay is golden.

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And yet you had multiple acceptances as did our son who had zero sports participation. None whatsoever.

And your essay did not stand in the way of acceptances either.

You were attractive to the schools that accepted you for exactly how you uniquely presented yourself. You will never know why you weren’t accepted to the schools that passed; most of the time it’s simply too few seats for too many wonderful applicants.

Don’t overanalyze in hindsight.

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So how do you like CA? My daughter just got admitted as a junior and so I hope you may be together. You sound so incredibly accomplished! Kudos

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Your reflection makes sense to me.

Essay is very important. It can glue your life events into a nice story about you, and make people want to meet you, if you write well.

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I really don’t know what these schools are looking for because I am happy I found this site but still I am happy I found it late not to have time to read many things compared to after we were done with all the applications.

Many of the students here including you your accomplishments are very impressive. I really don’t know what they saw in my daughter. Her SSAT were not that high that why we chose to stay away from the schools that required them. She is not an athlete nor a musician. Not much of leadership skills neither and very little volunteering experience but we applied to 11 schools and one magnet school. So total of 12 schools. She was accepted to 7 schools including the magnet school. She was rejected in one, Waitlisted in 4 and got off WL in 2 of those but we didn’t take.

So if I had time to read these accomplishments before we applied I would have opted not to apply to the schools we applied for the fear we would be just wasting our time. I guess is who they want.

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