<p>Do the schools accept the most recent scores, the best, or the first?</p>
<p>I did not do too well on my first, and I did alright on the second, and I am thinking about taking it again.</p>
<p>Please reply to this asap :)</p>
<p>The schools will look at which ever scores you send them. Unless you have sent them all of them, they will not know you took it 2 or 3 times.</p>
<p>does it matter if i took it more than one time?
Because I took it in November, and in December, I increased my score from an 85 to a 91. I am hoping to increase my score again in January.
So does it matter what date I put on the applications for the SSAT?</p>
<p>If you sent scores for all those dates, then I suppose you could write all of them on your application. If you only sent scores for your second test, then write that date. Why would you want to take the test again?</p>
<p>91 is very good. I don't believe you need to take them again. Where are you applying?</p>
<p>Theyre all very high reach for me.
Exeter, SPS, Hotchkiss, Deerfield, Choate, Lawrenceville, NMH, Peddie, and Hill.
I am a US Citizen in the 8th grade in Seoul Korea (international school)
I get mostly A's with occasional B's (our school has a rigorous system, and the grading system is 94-100--> A) pretty much mediocre grades :(
I am in the high school cross country team, high school varsity swim team, and JV Basketball team.
I'm part of a team of 40-50 students who goes to Indonesia during Spring Break for voluntary community service.
For my interviews, I did two with the admissions deans when they came to Korea, and some with regional reps, and 2 on the phone.</p>
<p>Any chance at all? :)</p>
<p>I think you should retake and get a 92+, that's a minimum score if you come from either of Korea, Japan, China or Hong Kong and aiming the top ten schools.</p>
<p>Well,
i wasnt sure about retaking; although I signed up, with the applications and everything, i dont have time to study, and retaking does not mean that I will do better. I do not even know if I can maintain my score.
:P I hope I do well this time hehe</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice and encouragement :]</p>
<p>You're trying to tweak results upwards (from an already excellent score) and, particularly due to the timing and application deadlines, you're not really in a position to check out your scores from January before sending them on to the schools...unless, of course, you forward the 91 scores to the schools so that you're merely "updating" your application instead of completing it after the deadline.</p>
<p>Yes, I know that these schools accept scores from the January SSAT, but I don't think you should press your luck and delay the reporting of those scores until after you've looked at them...unless, that is, you've given them earlier SSAT scores so that your file is complete by the deadline.</p>
<p>Your other option is to send them the January scores directly --without first sending your 91 score -- and hope that they're better than or equal to the 91 you received earlier. If not, then you can update with your earlier 91 score. But wouldn't that be sort of weird and show that you were trying to play the system?</p>
<p>So, if you even take the January test, I would send them the 91 score. (I do not follow international applications at all, and while I have to allow that it's possible that the schools have a hard cutoff at 92 for Asian students, that just strikes me as preposterous if only because no competent admission officer would tie his or her hands in that way.)</p>
<p>The question you need to then ask yourself is whether you gain much by sending in a January score...after you've seen it...to update your 91. </p>
<p>Well, the problem here is that while you and and I talking about a 91%, the schools are looking at much more detailed analysis than that. And you'd have to improve upon your score significantly to make a difference.</p>
<p>When schools receive your scores, they generally don't stop at 91% and think "Okay, this is good enough." They compare your scores to "context data" that show where your schools fit within their profiles. This includes the national percentile figures that you see, but it also includes other, school-specific context data that the SSAT delivers to schools for the Verbal/Reading/Math/Cumulative components of your test.</p>
<p>*** School Context - Received Reports:** Compares the individuals scores with all of the SSAT scores received by the school in the immediately preceding application year. This context appears on all score reports. </p>
<p>*** School Context - Accepted Students:** Compares the individuals scores with the SSAT scores of all those accepted by the school in the immediately preceding application year. This comparison is generated using data supplied by the school.</p>
<p>*** School Context - Enrolled Students:** Compares the individuals scores with the SSAT scores of all those enrolled by the school in the immediately preceding application year. This comparison is generated using data supplied by the school.</p>
<p>*** Shared Context - All Reports (Shared):** Compares the individuals scores with all of the SSAT scores received by the school and at least one other school in the preceding application year. It is akin to a score overlap report. </p>
<p>This year, in addition to the above context data, the SSAT is delivering on-line narrative information describing each data section, as well as two new pieces of data to aid in the candidate selection process:</p>
<pre><code>***** New descriptive information on Mean scores for all same-grade SSAT test-takers and as compared to those reporting scores to a specific school
***** Raw score analysis noting patterns in a tester's understanding of the material in each sub-section (V, Q, R) of the test
</code></pre>
<p>What the schools see is something like this:</p>
<p>++++++++.ALLRECD+++++++++ACCEPT.+++++++ENROLL.+++++ALLSHARE</p>
<p>VERB+++++172/692+++++++++168/352++++++++160/164++++++122/643
MATH++++.422/692+++++++++252/352++++++++162/164++++++215/643
READ+++++171/692+++++++++160/352++++++++155/164++++++121/643
CUM+++++.231/692+++++++++198/352++++++++159/164++++++174/643</p>
<p>*In column 1, ALLRECD, these ratios compare the candidates scores with all of the same-grade SSAT scores received by the school in the preceding year. This candidate ranked 231st out of 692 8th graders who sent scores to the school last year. Of all the 8th grade score reports the school received in the previous year, this student is in the upper quartile in Verbal and Reading but well into the third quartile in math. </p>
<p>In column 2, ACCEPT, these ratios compare the candidates scores with all of the same-grade SSAT scores of students accepted by the school in the preceding year. This candidate ranked 198th out of 352 students who were accepted into the schools 8th grade last year. Of all the 8th grade students the school accepted last year, this student sits slightly below the mid-point in Verbal and Reading and near the bottom quartile in math. </p>
<p>In column 3, ENROLL, these ratios compare the candidates scores with all of the same-grade SSAT scores of students enrolled at the school in the preceding year. This candidate ranked 159th out of 164 8th graders enrolled at the school last year. Where this candidate sits compared to all accepted and enrolled students indicates the school does not enroll many of its best testers and the school loses slightly more than half of the 8th graders it accepts. </p>
<p>In column 4, ALLSHARE, these ratios compare the candidates scores with all of the same-grade SSAT scores sent to the school and at least one other school in the preceding year. This candidate ranked 174th out of 643 8th graders who sent scores to the school and at least one other school. Of the 692 8th graders who sent score reports to the school last year, almost all of them (643) also sent scores to at least one other school. *</p>
<p>Source: SSAT</a> MEMBERS WEBSITE</p>
<p>The point is that you're not just hoping to improve your standing from a 91% to a 94%. You're trying to improve your standing across a large number of comparisons and improve results in your test-taking patterns. A 3% move on the national percentile -- assuming you can pull it off -- doesn't translate into a move that's so dramatic within each of these parameters for one of the top schools that you're applying to. And even if you went up in some area, including the cumulative/overall, are you going to go up in all areas? Most likely, the results in January will prove to be a mixed bag and unlikely to translate into any significant move -- up or down -- within the school context data.</p>
<p>You've seen that your scores are within a range. You can hope that you've grossly underperformed in the two tests you've taken and hope that you'll have a stellar, charm-filled day in a week and then, after confirming if that's the case in late January, you can forward the scores to the schools to update the 91 score you have on file. Just don't expect that an improvement will have you leapfrogging more than a handful of students in the school context data that these highly competitive schools are looking at.</p>
<p>If you can get a refund, I'd consider it. If not, then what the heck? Take it and see what happens. But even if some miracles happen in the national context, your already excellent score is hard to improve upon and won't be likely to be seen as a miracle by the schools you're applying to.</p>
<p>Very interesting!</p>
<p>my words exactly -- and I can see that if a school says "we don't place much importance on the ssat scores" that they might be referring to score itself, and they might place some importance on the shared context information. many different ways to interpret that ssat info.</p>
<p>Omg I Raised My Score To A 97!
:]</p>
<p>I visited that website, D'yer. I wonder if schools would share that info?</p>
<p>Interestingly, my son won't have his scores sent to the schools in that way. Our current school sends them for us. All the secondary schools that kids from our school apply to accept them that way (except one that we know of - but it is all the schools mentioned here and then some) so they would get the report for our CURRENT school which is a jr prep and so really would mean nothing to the schools.</p>
<p>@ keylyme: I think, as a matter of principle, if you send a score report you should receive that feedback for that school. Better still, they should publish that data. It would help applicants make informed choices. But...to answer your question...I doubt that the schools would share it.</p>
<p>The most valuable information would be the ACCEPT and ENROLL data. And that data is only available if the school voluntarily reports that information (which users were accepted and which enrolled) back to the SSAT, so there's a component that's proprietary to the schools. </p>
<p>When I saw that my first reaction was privacy. When applying, do the students consent to the schools reporting back student-specific outcome information to SSAT or other third parties? Because this only applies to accepted and enrolled students...and SSAT only knows where they sent scores, there's no way for SSAT to know if you didn't complete your application or were rejected, but the school information does reveal to SSAT which applicants were accepted and, of those, which ones enrolled, and I would think that that's a confidential academic record unless the applicants waive that release of data.</p>
<p>I would consent to sharing this data if, in return, it created a student-accessible database that was a tool that could be used by students. The current system seems to have the schools and SSAT benefiting -- to the exclusion of the students -- by trading and exchanging student-specific records. I don't think that's fair.</p>
<p>In that case, if you choose not submit the score to the school by SSAT and you send the copy of your SSAT score, you would not in the statistics. In the same token, if you have three SSAT scores submit to the school, should they calculated your average or the highest ?</p>
<p>I called every single one of my schools last night.
Some schools look at all three scores, some look at the best, and some take the best out of every section.</p>
<p>@ yan19454: That's not necessarily true (about not being in the statistics if your chid's current school sends the score report direct to the boarding schools). If the boarding school receives the score report from a source outside SSAT, the boarding school still has your SSAT information on that report. So, if they report enrollment and matriculation information back to SSAT, they could include these third party score results and SSAT can plug it all in to their school context results.</p>
<p>I don't think a school would accept a student's self-reported SSAT score. I can't think of any reason for a school to run the risk of falling victim to fraud; where's the upside for them?</p>
<p>If they accept an alternate test, such as the ISEE, then they could accept candidates who don't have SSAT test scores. They probably don't factor those into the stats as a "o", though.</p>
<p>I think SSAT would not provide the data entry part to accommodate self report score. When you take SSAT, they do not check ID. It would be fault, too. If you take ACT, they need to check your ID.</p>