Your COMPLETELY HONEST opinion on my chances for Exeter and Andover?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Chances
1

Hello!

I know that no one here can give me an accurate “chance” as we are all not AOs, but I’ve always wanted to post a chance thread for fun and would love to hear everyone’s input! Feel free to be brutally honest, I won’t mind :slight_smile:

Regular statistics:

–Female
–Applying for 9th grade
–ORM (Asian). Could be problematic.
–Severely underrepresented state. I couldn’t find the totals for Andover, but for Exeter, my “state count” was 1-4 people (I am assuming that this is 1-4 people, not 1-4 percent).
–Unique situation that is greatly underrepresented. I don’t want to post it on here because then I could be identifiable by admissions officers, but feel free to PM me!
–FA of about 65-75%
–Good relationship with AO. I think my AO really likes me.

Academics:

–SSAT 99th percentile, the same for all three sections too, after superscoring.
–All As in advanced/honor classes. Last year’s transcripts have all A’s as well. A couple of B’s in the quarterly grades but all of the final grades worked out to be an A.
–Pretty good ACT score. About a point higher than what was listed as Exeter’s and Andover’s average ACT scores.
–Honor roll student.
–Member of CTY, had several award certificates from them.
–Accepted to and participated in multiple other gifted student programs.
–Placed in several different regional competitions.

Extracurriculars:

–DII swimmer
–A couple of medals/ribbons on swimming
–Expressed my strong passion for swimming. From looking at Exeter’s and Andover’s times, I would be on the faster end of JV but currently, not quite yet to V. However, with enough practice/training from now until the winter season begins, I hope to be fast enough then to join the Varsity team. I don’t know if that would count as a “hook”.
–All of my extracurriculars (about five of them) have at least 6+ years of experience.
–Variety of music awards. Plays/played two instruments.
–5+ years of community service, 2-4 hrs. a week. I do a lot of community service in different areas though (EX: helped ESL student learn to read).
–Two other hobbies. Both are passions as well. I submitted art pieces.

Recommendations:

– Extracurricular/Special Interest - I don’t know my coach as well as I would have liked to, but my coach seems to really like me and often comments on my dedication to the sport.
–Math Teacher rec - Good/great.
–English teacher rec - Good/great.
–Personal rec - great! She likes me a lot and gave me the highest marks on everything and wrote very strongly about me as a person.
–School report - I’d say that this was good, but the person that filled out my school report surprisingly mentioned something that could possibly hurt me (I did not see the report, but the person who filled out the report told me what he/she wrote on there). The school report was also filled out within fifteen minutes so not much time was spent on it. It would probably feel rushed to an AO. It was still a good recommendation, but some parts were…meh.
–All of my recommenders commented strongly on my “maturity.”

Interviews:

–Interviews: I think they both went well, (received compliments saying that I was mature, interesting, unique, and intelligent), but I didn’t receive any responses such as “I am going to advocate for you in the admissions process!” Exeter - I’d say it was about an 8-8.5/10. Andover–maybe 8.5-9/10. I acted like myself and all of my responses were natural, not forced. I followed up my interviews with handwritten thank you notes.

Essays:

–I feel like both of them were very strong and I had a lot of input on them from friends/family members/teachers before submitting. I think I demonstrated my passions very well and showed my personality too. I’d say that my Andover one was stronger than my Exeter one.

Let me know if I need to provide any more info, and thanks for chancing me! :slight_smile: I love hearing feedback!

2

I forgot to mention that I am taking a classical language (Latin) too. I am bilingual (excluding Latin) if that information will help at all, haha (I don’t think it will).

3

You seem strong. I’d say you have a fighting chance. Good luck!!!

4

@mathman1201: Thanks! Do you see any weaknesses in what I put above that could potentially affect my application?

5

You know what the weaknesses are:

Asians are overrepresented in the applicant pool and you need a substantial amount of financial aid.

You know none of us can tell you, its only three more weeks. All of your data puts in the pool of people who will get seriously considered. I am sure your odds are higher than the 10% or whatever the overall Andover and Exeter admission number is.

One of the things I find fascinating about these chance me threads are that so much of getting in or not, once you meet the parameters of high enough grades, SSATs, is how appealing you are as a candidate which is impossible to judge in an anonymous online forum. None of us would know you if we bumped into you on the street, how can anyone ever know?? The easy chance me threads are the multitudes of kids who post asking whether their “77%ile on the SSAT will keep me out of Exeter?” etc. Those people are easy, you on the other hand are in the running, but you will have to wait. There are far more qualified kids than their are spots I am afraid……

Cross your fingers! Find something else to do if you can.

Good luck!

6

You know the answer; we don’t have an answer for you ^^

I don’t generally reply in the chance me thread. But this time I believe my input could apply to all with excellent scores and grades.

Given your numbers/grades/ECs look great, the schools would like to see any special, authentic features that you have. While it sounds like a buzzword, your passion to be a part of those schools and what you can bring in the community are very important. You need substantial amount of FA and so it, along with your OR Asian background, could be a little minus. As such, it would be nice to have such a qualitative feature as passion and/or your potential contributing factors to the community. I hope you have expressed that well in your essays and interviews. Best of luck!

7

@patronyork:

Thanks for the response! I do have two strong passions, those of which were stated in my essays and my parents’ parent statement and I did mention it in my interview as well (I was also asked the direct question: “What would you contribute to the ______ community?”). I will admit, I did not elaborate as much about my passions as I would have liked to in my interviews–.my interviewers mainly asked me academic-related questions and the rest of the time was spent with me asking questions. I followed up with the departments/coaches that are in that area and explicitly stated my passion for the two, so I hope I did enough!

I guess it is a toss up, however, because the schools might already have applicants with more qualified statistics in those areas. I will have to just wait and see.

Thanks for the good luck wishes! I hope to be here on CC with great news on M10. :slight_smile:

8

Thanks for the encouragement and input, @LifeLongNYer. I guess I will just have to wait and see how the admissions results turn out. Hopefully I will be here on CC with some great news on March 10! :slight_smile:

I will try to find something to occupy my time while waiting. I’ve found my schedule to be suspiciously empty post-application season, which has spiked my addiction to CC. :wink:

9

You stand a good chance… your swimming is definitely a hook if you can prove that you will get it up to V. Your academics are excellent, but there are alot of almost perfect scores on the ssat like yours so you’re definitely being considered. Maybe, try to focus more on community service. I know you’ve already done alot but try to show your passion for them. One questions tho: how did you see the state counts for exeter and andover?

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@Anonymousia‌ I saw only the state totals for Exeter; I don’t think Andover has one. I can PM you the link.

11

Andover has needs-blind admissions. Scholarship need will not enter into it: the admissions officers don’t even know if you are applying for financial aid.

Andover accepts roughly one out of nine applicants. Virtually every applicant I know is a coin-toss: so as a practical matter, you have a 50/50 chance at either school.

A better hedge might have been to apply to one of the “biggies” and a highly selective smaller school like Groton, St Paul’s, Middlesex, etc. Schools are always concerned about “yield.”