<p>My child got his SSAT scores - </p>
<p>79% overall
46% verbal
86% quantitative
97% reading</p>
<p>The verbal is too low - math and reading are fine. Will the inconsistency from subject to subject hurt him? And will schools look past his mediocre overall score and see his individual math and reading scores? Not sure how important the overall score is...</p>
<p>Thanks for your thoughts.</p>
<p>The answer is, it depends. Inconsistency isn’t necessarily a problem, though it can be. It’s a little bit odd to see such a wide discrepancy between verbal and reading, which I think usually tend to be in the same ballpark. That might raise a bit of a red flag, I don’t know. But in general, my understanding is that schools pay more attention to the overall score, and then look at individual scores where they’re particularly pertinent. For instance, a kid who says in his application that he’s a math/science kid, but then gets a low score on math, that could be a concern.</p>
<p>That discrepancy between verbal and reading is so odd that I would wonder if the kid mis-bubbled - meant to skip a question, but then used that question’s answer row for the next question, and continued so on down the line, therefore getting many more wrong.</p>
<p>I know … hard to say exactly what happened. We’re not going to take the test again. So I just wondered how the schools might read it. It’s weird and problematic. </p>
<p>He’s always been a fabulous reader. He didn’t study a lot for the ssat - and the time he did spend he focused on math. So we didn’t really touch vocab at all. So maybe his vocabulary isn’t great? I don’t know. But I’m worried about the score…</p>
<p>Do boarding schools - especially the most competitive ones - “superscore” the components of the SSAT for those who have taken it more than once? Thanks</p>
<p>not make sense
usually people have good Vocab score bu t bad reading score
not possible to get the other Way around
another Test may be able to boost overall to 95 percent
Some School may take Feb test</p>
<p>Maybe he was confused by the format of the analogies questions. Depending on what happens, may be worth taking a practice test and going over the wrong answers, if you will need to apply again.</p>
<p>He’s not going to take the ssat again. We’re pleased with how well he did with the reading and math. We’re a bit perplexed about the verbal, but there’s really nothing we can do about it. I hope his grades and extra curricular activities carry him through…</p>
<p>His essays do say he loves reading and writing and science. They don’t say he loves analogies! 
</p>
<p>I’m just curious how the admissions people will look at these scores - will they bother to look past the overall percentage to see the great math and reading? And then just puzzle at the verbal? Or will they not even give his application a chance?</p>