A working estimate of the low end of an acceptable SSAT score range

Prep School Admissions
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<p>A lot of posters ask what a school’s “cut off” score is for the SSAT. From what I have gathered, schools don’t have a hard cut off score. That said, there is a typical score range for most (not all) admitted students. </p>

<p>What is the range for each school? DISCLAIMER: I don’t really know. I have no inside knowledge of the dark art practiced by admissions offices. This is just one parent’s working estimate.</p>

<p>This is what I do know:
- The school’s reported Average SSAT is just that, an AVERAGE
- All the kids in the school are not going to have an identical score
- Some kids will have a score above the average
- Some kids will have a score below the average. </p>

<p>So the big question is: just how low below the average???</p>

<p>The Average SSAT score for the 2 most mentioned schools on this board is 94 %percentile.</p>

<p>It is mathematically possible that out of a group of 20 students, 19 of them have a 99 %percentile score and one of them has a 1 %percentile score:</p>

<p>99% 99% 99% 99% 99%
99% 99% 99% 99% 99%
99% 99% 99% 99% 99%
99% 99% 99% 99% 1%</p>

<p>But this is unrealistic. It’s more likely that the scores are more evenly represented. So for rough planning purposes for the most selective schools, I have been treating the Average SSAT score as a midpoint. </p>

<p>If the top of the scale is 99 %percentile, and 94 %percentile is the midpoint, then the low side of the scale is 89 %percentile. Don’t freak out if your score is slightly below that that. Like I said, this is just for rough planning purposes. </p>

<p>You’ll also hear of a few kids who get admitted w scores well below the low range, but those kids are few and far between. And they often have some compelling extenuating circumstance (e.g., English not the first language or low socio-economic background), or they have a hook (e.g., recruited athlete or award-winning filmmaker war-orphan refugee from Burkina Faso).</p>

<p>As I said before, don’t freak out if your score is slightly below the low end; a high SSAT is also no guarantee. DS’s score was well above the average for all the schools, and he still didn’t get admitted to all of them. </p>

<p>My crystal ball is faulty, so take my estimation method with a huge grain of salt...</p>

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<p>Interesting algorithm and who knows? Possibly not too far off. </p>

<p>I’ve always assumed the BSR and other sites’ reference to “average” to mean, “mean”. Which would make your first example quite as accurate as the one you settled on, which describes a presumptive median. </p>

<p>I tend to assume the range is greater than the 10 points spread you have described, but again, it is PURELY an assumption. </p>

<p>As the parent of a student who also had scores far above all the averages, and who was, as we’d expected, accepted to about half the schools to which she applied, I wonder if, as a high ssat is no guarantee, a lower than average ssat will not necessarily be a deal-breaker, assuming other positive factors, not even necessarily as extreme as being an award-winning blind conductor from a war-torn banana republic.</p>

<p>But MY crystal ball just rolled down the steps and into a snow bank, so we will have to wait for some more thawing (perhaps from some of that salt you mentioned). I anticipate a big thaw around March 10 ;-)</p>

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<p>I do NOT think it’s a 10 point spread. I think it’s some spread around the Average. Since 99% is the highest possible score, then that will serve to limit the number of low scores. To calculate the average, all the numbers have to add up.</p>

<p>low mid max spread
89<strong>94</strong>99 +/-5
65<strong>82</strong>99 +/-17
51<strong>75</strong>99 +/-24</p>

<p>This is simplistic and I doubt the spread is symmetrical like this. Like I said, it’s only for planning purposes to guestimate whether one’s score is within spittting distance, or to help make a decision whether it is worth the trouble to retake the test.</p>

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<p>Ah, thank you for the clarification! And that make much more sense to me, as well as seeming like a better picture of what’s actually coming in to the schools.</p>

<p>I was basing my 10-point comment on this: "If the top of the scale is 99 %percentile, and 94% percentile is the midpoint, then the low side of the scale is 89 %percentile. "</p>

<p>It would be interesting to learn, once the final tally of acceptances is in, how some of the students who fear their scores are “too low” will have done. Perhaps someone will start a post after March 10 with some correlative information.</p>

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<p>GMT, do you think that if the average score is 94% then a 82% is going to hurt your application, if so, do you think that the score is low enough to get you rejected from the school?</p>

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<p>^Hmmm… I think I can answer that having gained wisdom from perusing this site.
As you’re heard many a time before the application is made of many different parts and the SSAT is the only apples to apples comparison. I don’t think an 82% alone is going to get you rejected from the school. A 99% could be rejected by the school simply because they reject a lot of qualified applicants.
For those who like lists…
-SSAT is just one part
-many qualified applicants are rejected
-SSAT is solely for comparison’s sake
-SSAT score in relation to acceptance depends on the school.
Also GMT’s prediction is very loose as he stated and he also thinks the range is more. I’m sure there are plenty of people that got in with a sub- 85% score.</p>

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<p>@wavyboy,</p>

<p>I don’t know what the AdComs really do. </p>

<p>But if it were my kid with a 82% and the rest of his application looked strong, then I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.</p>

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<p>Alright good, I agree with you guys. Honestly, i feel it is impossible to have a cut off line. There are too many different applicants for there to be one. For example, if one student who goes to a ranked private school and gets in the 85%, the person who gets an 85% and goes to a developing low quality public school has the “better” score. Everything from your race, school, and wealth are factored into your score. That is why I think schools always say that they have no cut off line.</p>

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<p>+1 WavyBoy2017</p>

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<p>@GMTPlus7, I think your lowpoint is much too high. I think any score at or above 80% on the verbal sections of the SSAT is sufficient. </p>

<p>Why do I say that? Well, Andover’s school profile is online. <a href=“http://www.andover.edu/Academics/CollegeCounseling/Documents/PhillipsAcademySchoolProfile2012-2013.pdf[/url]”>http://www.andover.edu/Academics/CollegeCounseling/Documents/PhillipsAcademySchoolProfile2012-2013.pdf&lt;/a&gt; The mean SAT scores (note, not SSAT) of the class of 2011 lie around 93 - 94 % on the College Board’s percentile ranking tables: <a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;. </p>

<p>Roughly half the class scored between 700 - 800 on the SAT in CR, M, Writing, that is, between the 93rd and 99th percentiles (varying slightly by section.) </p>

<p>HOWEVER, 40% of the class scored between 600 and 690 on the three SAT sections, that is, between the 81st and 94th percentiles on critical reading, the 74th and 92nd percentiles on math, and the 82nd and 95th percentiles on writing. Some 13% of the class of 2011 scored less than 600 on Critical Reading.</p>

<p>If I had a kid who scored an 83% on the SSAT, I see no reason not to apply to Andover. The SSAT score would not be the factor which might lead to a rejection. I would worry more about a bad interview, bad recommendations, or a spotty transcript showing a habit of not handing in homework. If I had a kid who had a 97% score on the SSAT, I would want to spread a wide net as well. </p>

<p>I suppose with time I’ve come to understand what schools mean when they say the SSAT/SAT are not as important as applicants think they are. They are not meaningless. There is a level which is too low, i.e., the student may not be able to keep up with the volume of schoolwork. That level is certainly not 88%, though.</p>

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<p>The scores are not just averages. In other words, it doesn’t mean that there are X number of scores over the mid point with a corrsponing X number of scores below it. The way it usually works, from what I have seen is that most of the accepted kids have scores hovering around r the Midpoint with some kids over it and the exceptions ( outreach kids, athletes, development) making up that below. It is very possible that if the midpoint is a 7, that very few kids with a 5 or below are even considered, and that as many as 80% or more of the students have that 7. It is NOT a bell curve.</p>

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<p>The schools say that the scores ARE averages. And I absolutely agree with you that the distribution is probably not some neat, symmetrical bell curve around the average. </p>

<p>My gut also tells me that a score above 80 percentile is still OK for Andover, that is why I told wavyboy not to worry about an 82.</p>

<p>I’ve made this clear on every single post of this thread that this calculation is a simplistic guestimate-- I don’t have the actual data to plot and analyze. So you all can stop picking on me now.</p>

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<p>One AO I know (from a day school not a boarding school) made an interesting point: they would rather see low SSATS with high grades than the other way around. High SSATs and low grades means that someone might not be working to their potential. Low SSATs and high grades tells them that for this particular person, the test is not a good indicator of who they are as a student.</p>

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<p>GMTplus7, I don’t want to pick on you…please forgive me! It’s just that your posts have an air of authority, and I could foresee quite admissible kids deciding they have no shot at admission with an 88%.</p>

<p>My gut tells me it’s better to be interesting with respectable scores than blah with stellar scores.</p>

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<p>I agree with Periwinkle. I’d not be surprised even if there are students admitted to Andover with 70-80 percentile SSAT scores. But the vast majority of applicants should be narrowly hover above or below the average. </p>

<p>If you care to learn about the statistics behind this reasoning, mean (=average) values work well for a normal (=Gaussian) distribution but not for a highly skewed distribution like Andover SSAT scores, which is more like a Poisson distribution. To make my explanation simpler, if you look at [this</a> composite histogram](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poisson_pmf.svg"]this”>File:Poisson pmf.svg - Wikipedia), Andover SSAT score distribution should resemble the yellow histogram. If you could imagine the X axis to be flipped, you get the distribution of 0~20 (say, 99 percentile to 1 percentile) with the mean at 1 (95 percentile). You will also see the distance between the mean (1=95 pctl) and the max (0=99 pctl) is much more smaller than that between the mean (1=95 pctl) and the min (~9=50~50 pctl). I’m not saying Andover SSAT distribution is the same as the yellow, but it should be fairly similar.</p>

<p>Also, what it tells you is that any reasonable person would not count on being so lucky to be admitted to Andover with 70 percentile SSAT, unless s/he has a certain other merits to overcome the deficiency in academic horsepower.</p>

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<p>I have been assured up the whazooie that test scores are not the full picture, but I can tell you that a very high test score increases the chances of acceptance greatly, and all other things being up there pretty much ensures acceptance except in a few cases. you</p>

<p>Sharinggift, my best friends DD was accepted to a top school with scores around the 50% point. She was rejected from most of these schools, but one took her and one waitlisted her. She had superb recs, perfect grades and came from a rigorus private high school, with a personal touch to the app from that high school. So, yes, it does happen. But for the most part those scores are very important.</p>

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<p>Mr Gary, the PEA admissions director, was asked at an alumni panel what one thing a parent could do to help their child get admitted. he didn’t hesitate-- “Have SSATs above the 90%”. Now that was one comment, at one time about one school but it was still telling that of the things Mr Gary could mention, SSAT scores were it.</p>

<p>Also to a poster above–high grades and low SSATs–could also mean that the kid is max-ing out and doen’t have upside. Remember boarding schools are not universities-- achievement matters but potential matters more. One interviewer at a HADES school put it this way-- “I am looking for the flower bud that will blossom in the type of water we have here.” That is what 8th graders are-- buds, not fully bloomed flowers. This becomes less the case if a student is applying for 11th grade of course…</p>

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<p>Etondad, context matters. Was the audience composed of alumni? I think Andover could assume their alums would enroll their children in good schools. As Andover strives for diversity, it could well be that alumni children need scores above 90% on the SSAT.</p>

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<p>I got a 71 on the total percentile of my SSAT. I don’t know what to do, and I’m so upset.</p>

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<p>Do you think a 72 percent is too bad for an international applicant who is going to repeat a year? Applying to GLADCHEMMS.</p>