<p>Ah, crew. The sport of my family. My dad wants me to continue it because he thinks I’ll be accepted into all these good colleges like my oldest brother.</p>
<p>I just remembered something funny… One of my friends is like a killer applicant. I mean, she does all of these things (like soccer for 9 years, basketball for 3, swimming for four, piano for 7, and viola for 4) and she likes BS, but won’t apply. She’s like an honors student and takes a bunch of advanced classes, and she does a ton of stuff for our town and has awards for her music, academics, and athletics. When I told her to consider boarding school because she’s a more qualified applicant than me she just laughed <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>I have tons of friends like that! but I mean, I’m kind of glad they chose not to apply because most BSs don’t really like to take more than one student from the same school in one year </p>
<p>Anyone thinkin’ about taking the ISEE intead of SSAT?</p>
<p>Maybe I’ll do one SSAT and one ISEE</p>
<p>I scored a 2272 out of 2400 on a practice SSAT, does anyone know around what percentile thats in?</p>
<p>i think low 90s…there is a chart in the back of the Princeton Review book, so go to a bookstore and look at it if you dont have it. The book is pretty good also so it may be worth buying. I like the Peterson’s book best. (it’s brown with a big pencil on it.)</p>
<p>i think that’s low-mid 90s. </p>
<p>ps, just a warning: kaplan’s practice SSATs are way too easy. i think princeton review’s practice SSATs are pretty good.</p>
<p>Haha, when I took the practice test from the Princeton Review, I totally bombed it. However, when I took the real SSAT, I got a 99 percentile overall, as well as the Verbal section. Quite frankly, it’s just luck. I won’t be re-applying this year, but I am going to a prep school, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask!</p>
<p>Was the Princeton Review harder than the real SSAT? I’ve heard it one way from another and I want a different perspective.</p>
<p>i bombed the Princeton Review also and got a high 80s, and I thought that the vocab work did NOT help me. But the math section was really helpful to me. I think I said this earlier, but I liked the Peterson’s book for vocab. It also had an “analysis test” sort of thing, so I could see where I needed to study without doing a full test. It was really cool.</p>
<p>I’m especially scared for vocabulary, with those tricky analogies. Gr… Not too concerned about the reading portion, last time I didn’t take my time. I’ll do otherwise this time. I’ll be sure to get it though.</p>
<p>Last year I practiced by reading my dads boring motorcycle magazines, consumer reports and the wall street journal and writing summaries of them afterwards. It made the SSAT readings about the history of lima beans almost exciting! I ended up with a 97th percentile on that section!</p>
<p>Don’t stress too much about the SSAT. Here’s my advice for each section:</p>
<p>Reading
Just read. Find a good book, a good genre, a good author, or a subject that interests you, and read about it. In some ways, I’ve learned more from reading than I ever have in school. If you read a lot for pleasure, the reading section of the SSAT should be a piece of cake. </p>
<p>Verbal
The verbal section has two parts: Vocabulary and Analogies. For the analogies section, I’d look at Kaplan’s. They explain how to solve analogies really well IMO. Also, just by reading a lot in general, analogies will be easier. As for the vocabulary, buy the Princeton Review SSAT book, and memorize every word on their list of words that commonly appear on the SSAT. Then, buy the official SSAT prep book and take a few practice tests and see how well you do.</p>
<p>Math
This is the tough one (for me, at least). The first time I took the upper level SSAT, I scored in the 58th percentile on the math section. I got a good tutor (who I continued to see for a while) and I improved my score to 78%. My advice to any new applicants who struggle with math is to take practice tests, see what kind of questions you miss, and try to figure out where you messed up. This really helped with me. Also, if there are questions which you don’t understand at all, ask your math teacher (unless he/she’s incompetent) or a friend. </p>
<p>In my opinion, I don’t think you should begin preparing for the SSAT until 8 weeks before the test. That’s the earliest. What happened when I started to prepare for the SSAT more than 8 weeks before is that I wound up
a) Being extremely nervous for the test and not doing so well.
b) Forgetting a lot of the stuff I’d learned.</p>
<p>8 weeks is plenty of time to prepare. Also, unless your scores from practice tests are embarrassingly bad, I wouldn’t spend several hours a day on preparation as well. This is just unnecessary. I think anywhere between 10-30 minutes a day is reasonable.</p>
<p>Thanks ifax. I’ll order those books and just do practice tests for math.</p>
<p>Ordered Princeton Review and Kaplan yesterday. Got four other packages from schools too. Right now…Proctor doesn’t look that nice. Just a regular sized envelope (the kind you would send a letter in), telling me all their information is ok the website in a folded piece of card-stock. Probably one of the best prepared packages was from Stevenson. Three booklets in a plastic wrapping, no dents or tears (unlike some from Cate and Westminster). It looks very well prepared and presented. Although Asheville had a very nice package too.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t judge a school too much based on their packages…</p>
<p>I’m not. I like all of these school (though I wasn’t that interested in Proctor that much - more of a safety), but I’m just saying how they present their information that makes the applicant look at it and think, “I want to go there.” Not really basing on what school I want to go to by looking at their packages, but if they send me something, I want to be able to know more about the school before visiting - because you can’t really get the FULL picture just by the packages. In no way am I going to choose my number one school by the packages. I ordered them so I can see which school offers the academic, athletic, and artistic needs for me and narrow down my list from those facts. (:</p>
<p>I loved the Deerfield booklet! It was split into two books, one for the regular info the other for the courses. It just felt really nice in my hands and really made me want to attend! The miss porters pamphlet that can be picket up at school fairs (not sure I’d it’s different than the mailed one) was also very nice. It was called “portrait of a porters girl” and included a lot of student interviews. The NMH book didn’t include any pictures of the campus but it included a lot of interesting info! The dana hall one was also very pretty and aesthetically appealing.
Do schools that I requested info from last year send me new info for this year or do I have to re-request?</p>
<p>I agree with rizzledrizzle that a weak viewbook can give off a bad vibe. It is only one part of the school, however it can sway your first impression, and first impressions are everything! Its sort of like if you sent a thank you note for your interview and just sent it on a piece of paper with one or two sentences thanking them while everyone else sense eloquent notes on cardstock.</p>