HELP on SSAT!! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Prep School Admissions
1

<p>HI! I am taking the SSAT's pretty sooon and I hope to do my very best (at least over 90 percentile--fervently hope!). For anyone who has taken it, can you give me any advice or firsthand experiences? Any comment would be greatly appreciated in regards to acing this test and I am particularly struggling on the RC and Verbal. Is it better to skip or just answer as many questions as I can? </p>

<p>Thanks, thanks, thanks a lot :)</p>

2

<p>I’m taking my first SSAT a few days from now on, and I’m half nervous half excited. Just like coolcookies, I personally require a bit more improvement on the Verbal section (pretty difficult vocabulary words!). I’m also baffled of this particular scoring system, when you don’t answer a question (it’s a zero) and if you get a question wrong (negative points…?!). </p>

<p>Thank you. ;)</p>

3

<p>When you get a question wrong, 1/4 point is deducted from the points you have accumulated. For instance, if there are 40 questions in a section and you omit 4 and get 4 wrong, your points (raw score) for that section would be 31 rather than 32 because of the wrong answer penalty (as if getting it wrong wasn’t a penalty enough. I know, it’s to discourage guessing.) 40 - 4 omitted = 36; 36 - 4 wrong = 32; 32 - 4/4 = 32 -1 = 31</p>

<p>PS: I have no idea how they go about rounding the wrong answer penalty; if 2.5 if rounded up or down.</p>

4

<p>The rule of thumb is avoid “wild guess” - if you have absolute no idea skip it, but if you can eliminate two of the possible answers, maybe it’s worth guessing.</p>

5

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/441856-ssat-guessing.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/441856-ssat-guessing.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

6

<p>OH! I see now! I guess the standard system of a good test-taker is to make sure that

  1. I am not wildly guessing
  2. I go with my first answers
  3. answer the question if I have a chance to. </p>

<p>Thanks for all of the great responses!</p>

7

<p>Somewhere in one of the review books is advice on “if you are trying to get XX, then answer this many questions”…a time management strategy that might allow you to focus on questions where you at least can narrow things down to 2 choices vs. wild guessing.</p>