Thank you for taking the time to read this post and if you couldn’t tell, I’m sort of new here :). I am taking as much advice as I can because I am super excited and nervous about boarding school and I just wanted to know my chances of getting in. Since I do not know how these posts work and like the format for everything, I’m just going to put basically write everything about me and my boarding school application here. BTW this is pretty lengthy so please just bear with me :).
I’m not entirely sure if this affects anything, but I was born in an extremely small town. My parents are both Asian (Mom is from China and Dad is from South Korea) and they came to the United States I believe 20 years ago, maybe more. Anyways, my family and I moved to another city in 2016, which is bigger than my hometown. My dad is really into academic things and found this financial aid program online called the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Since my sister is older than me, she went through this process first. She applied and got in, which was great. There, her advisors recommended her to go to boarding school. The moment that I heard about it, I researched about it and found the perfect school for me called Phillips Academy Andover. My sister applied to Andover, Exeter, Choate, Deerfield, and Lawrenceville in her 8th grade year for 9th grade. When she got her results back, she was waitlisted on all of them. She was really sad because her dream school was Exeter. The next year, she applied again, only applied to Andover, Exeter, and Choate, and got accepted into all of them. I thought that she was going to Exeter, but went to Andover instead. Not only that, but she got full financial aid coverage (full scholarship) and is currently a Tang Scholar (like how am I supposed to compete with that?? HELP!). So that’s my sister’s story, but enough about her, let’s get to me because I’m the one who needs help (jk but seriously).
I was always really good at math. When I was in 6th grade, I took Accelerated Algebra I (I’m planning to skip Trigonometry to do Calculus). And because I was so excelled in math, I was given an opportunity to skip 2 grades in 2nd grade, but because my parents didn’t want me to because reasons I don’t know, so I only skipped one. I am currently 12 years old in 8th grade (turning 13 in June) and I go to a special program for gifted students where 45 students are chosen from 6-8 grade in the whole city and they take classes with high school students. I was fortunate enough to get into the program and I have been there for 1 ½ years now. As I mentioned before, my father found a financial aid program called the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which I applied to, but I was not able to get into the program. This was very disappointing, but I still had a chance with boarding school. The schools I am applying to are Andover, Exeter, and Choate. My grades are very good. I have never gotten an A- to an F in my life (aka have always gotten A+s if that wording was confusing at all), and from the high school courses I am taking, I currently have a 4.0 GPA even though I’m in 8th grade. The classes I am currently taking in school are PLTW Biomedical Sciences, Algebra 2 Honors, Wind Ensemble (the highest level of band in my school which is only for the most advanced students and you have to submit a recording of yourself playing your instrument), Spanish 2 Honors, Humanities, Philosophy, and Physics First Honors. My extracurricular activities (only school clubs) include Math Club, Art Club, Yearbook, and Student Council. I have been doing Math Club for 5 years and have won multiple competitions, such as SBU (a competition in only in Missouri I believe), MathCounts, and AMC8. I have been in art club and yearbook club, both, for 3 years. And for Student Council, I was the 6th Grade Representative and I am currently the 8th grade Vice President. For music, I play 3 instruments and take private lessons for those and I also take voice lessons. I play piano (8 years), flute (4 years), and guitar (recently started but have been wanting to play since I was 7). I have won multiple competitions for piano and flute, receiving a 1, the highest score, in all competitions, and for band, I have won the best player in the band and I have won 1s in a duet and a solo competition. For sports, I have always been extremely active and have been through many sports, but due to other activities and clubs, I was not able to keep all of the sports and just stuck to the one that I have been doing for the longest time: swimming. I have won too many competitions to count, so I won’t waste your time by typing them all here.
I’ll attempt to make this short but I 110% doubt it will be. This will just be about the application and language stuff. So since my parents are from China and Korea, I have always been at least trilingual. So as a list of languages I can speak fluently or am really advanced in are Chinese, Korean, English, Spanish (will continue taking classes for Spanish though), French, and Japanese (and am wanting to learn Thai). So for my interviews, I went to the campus for Andover so I could get the full experience and to see my sister, but for Exeter and Choate I decided to do a Skype interview because the plane tickets cost a lot and the hotel fee would just exceed all limits financial wise. For my Andover interview, I was extremely lucky because my interviewer was the assistant director and she was the one who admitted my sister. We talked for a long period of time and I was surprised when I was told it took more than an hour because it only felt like 30 minutes. For Exeter, it also lasted for more than an hour and I got really great feedback from my interviewer. And for Choate, the interview lasted for only 30 minutes because she was conducting only 30 minute interviews, so I wasn’t too worried about the time limit on that (also got great feedback but Choate isn’t my dream school). Recommendation time (sorry for writing in big paragraphs)! I believe that my recommendations were amazing because I am very close to my teachers and I always participate in class because I really like my classes. They all seemed very excited to write a recommendation for me so I’m not too worried about it. Also, I’m hoping that my essays are good because even though I’m good at writing essays, I’m not the best. But the thing I am worried about is my SSAT Score. I took the SSAT 3 times, in November, December, and January, but I got the same exact score on all of them (I mean like how does one do that?). My reading and verbal scores fluctuated a bit but on all three times, my math score was a perfect 800. I scored a 90% on all three and when I asked the admissions office at the three schools, they said it didn’t hurt if I turned them all in, so I did. I just know how it affects your chances, and I just want to know if it is too low because I thought it was and it is lower than Andover’s average SSAT score rate. Living to the expectation of my sister is really hard to do since she was good at everything she did and she also scored in the 99th percentile on her first try on the SSAT. I just feel really bad about spending so much money of my parents’ and if I don’t get in, I will just feel really terrible.
I guess I just really want to know my chances of getting in just to be prepared in case I don’t (so I don’t raise my hopes up too much). I also apologize if you felt like I was bragging, I just wanted to give as much information to the people who comment, so they can give the most accurate answer. Thank you so much for bearing with me through the monstrous post, and I hope you all have an amazing day!!! (PS please tell me if I missed any information because I do not want to add anything else here 
).