<p>Both my kids took the October SSAT. My daughter, at that point, was not interested in applying to boarding schools and did no prep. She still did pretty well, with a combined percentile in the high 80s. She has changed her mind about applying, so she wants to retake the test and prepare for it this time; she is sure she can do better. Does anyone out there have any experience to share as to whether preparation really raises scores? Just curious.</p>
<p>It did for my kid–not a huge shift, but maybe 7 points overall? Couldn’t hurt.</p>
<p>High 80’s is an acceptable score, especially if she did about equally well in all three sections, even for some more selective schools. An increase of a few percentage points with prep may not be worth the effort. If, however, she did poorly in one section, then some focused prep work may help. A typical guidebook such as Princeton Review would provide ''strategies", content review and some practice tests, which is often enough. If you have more time, find one or two more guidebooks and do more practice tests.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input. I think she can do better with prep; her reading score was the strongest and the other two are more “preppable,” I would imagine. She says she only just learned some of the geometry that was on the test this week. If she could get 7 percentile points out of it, it would be worth it; as an FA candidate, I would imagine she particularly needs to impress as much as possible. Luckily, her brother has no reason to retake, so I won’t have to shell out $240 again. :-)</p>
<p>Prep can help a lot! I took the Middle Level SSAT in late May and scored in the 68th percentile. I started using three prep books (Kaplan, Barron’s, and Princeton Review) in late June. I also learned about 800 words. This led to a score in the high-nineties on the October Upper Level SSAT.</p>
<p>The guidebook that you can order from SSAT.org is very good.</p>
<p>For verbal, my kid played various SAT vocab flash cards/quizlet/games on iPod, which helped.</p>
<p>quizlet is also an amazing help!</p>