I’m currently preparing for the October SSAT in 3 (!) days, and I’ve taken quite a few practice tests. I’m doing consistently well enough (in my mind) on the verbal and math sections, but there’s a huge disparity between my scores on different practice tests for the reading section.
When I took the Princeton Review practice test, my raw score for verbal was 35. I also took the Ivy Global practice test, in which I got a raw score of 37-38 ish. I also had a score of around 32 on the SSAT full practice test (quite a noticeable difference). However, when I took the SSAT reading section tests, I consistently had raw scores well below 30 (think 24-28).
Furthermore, I make way more mistakes on the first page (there are two pages, one with 25 questions, the next with 15) than the second- on one section test, I made maybe 7 mistakes on the first page and none on the second. I’m very confused with these inconsistent scores. I’m getting really scared that all the practice tests I’m taking are too easy, and I’m going to bomb the actual SSAT. I feel like the SSAT section tests would be the most accurate as well.
Does anybody know if the practice SSAT section tests are an accurate representation of the difficulty of the real test?
Thanks for reading this ramble, haha. It’s kind of stupid but it’s been really worrying me.
My daughter had better scores on the actual tests, than the practices, even though raw scores were roughly the same. I think the score guides for the practice tests were off. (Or at lest they were two years ago.) However, wide variances in raw scores are a different issue. That’s addressed with sitting for more than one test and not reporting your chosen score until after you have taken your “best” test. Also, some schools will superscore. Ask your AO as the deadline approaches.
Update as of today’s test: The 2 kiddos took the test and said the Reading section was a challenge – more difficult than the popular company study books – they claim it was most like SSAT book- its hard for these kids who are in schools with state, common core & IB mandates wth reading material so different than material on SSAT. BTW during study session we realized the following: My 13 year-old nephew has no idea what “munificent” means – clue: Not a Disney character L-)
Math straightforward :-/ - some stuff they forgot because they are ahead - but that’s a less tricked-out section than reading for our crew, at least. Just seems to be a great divide between the reading material in school, language of the culture & media, and material on the tests. Kids just started 8th grade and not yet reading Ye Olde English :ar!
I took the test on Saturday too, and I found that math was pretty much the same as the practice tests but the reading material was surprisingly hard and took much more time to comprehend. I thought verbal was actually easier but maybe that’s my vocab practice paying off.