<p>Hello - new member here. My D is an 8th grader looking to apply to Cate, Thacher, and Webb. She is an exemplary student, with a 4.0 GPA, lots of ECs, etc. She was a member of a team that won a national award last year - 9th place in the nation in a science/engineering competition, she has danced/cheered for 6 years, is on the debate team, I can go on and on. :) However her Math score on the SSAT was extremely low - 54th percentile of SSAT takers (although 95th percentile nationwide - go figure!). Her (public) school has gone through two math teachers in the past two years and, although I know it's not an excuse, I suspect it is part of the reason she scored so poorly - she's never been introduced to most of the geometry concepts on the test! Although she scored much higher in the verbal and reading comprehension sections, the math score brought her composite SSAT score down to the 78th precentile. My question is twofold, actually - first, is the low Math score an insurmountable barrier to being accepted to any or all of these schools? Second, is the composite score more important? Thanks in advance for any responses.</p>
<p>I was just browsing the threads and you might get more replies if you ask this question below in the “general threads”. Good luck to your daughter.</p>
<p>One idea is to watch videos and take quick concept check tests at khanacademy.org, then retest. I think the SSAT math section is the easiest to improve quickly, and it does not require algebra.</p>
<p>My son scored in the 55th percentile for Math on his first SSAT (his score rose on a second try). One admissions counselor said that American public school students usually do not make the upper percentiles, because so many international students now apply to US boarding schools, and they tend to perform better on standardized math tests. I don’t know what they typical range is for the schools you mentioned (it might be published on a site like Boarding School Review), but you should probably ask an admissions officer whether they’d recommend her taking the test again. The percentile represents how she compares with other 8th-grade girls who have taken the SSAT over a 3-year period; the SSATs draw a very accomplished, elite demographic pool, which is why they provide an estimate for how she compares with all 8th-graders nationally. That number doesn’t really help you in prep school admissions, but it might show you that her numerical score was respectable, but simply placed her in the middle of the pack.</p>
<p>Last year I got a 58 on the Math SSAT the first time I took it. I talked to a few admissions officers, and I was told to definitely retake the SSAT. I retook it, and got a 78 in Math. They said that was fine, especially since I had high Reading/Verbal scores. Have her retake the SSAT until she can get at least in the 70’s. If she doesn’t get in the 70’s, it’s probably not the end of the world, but she should really aim for it.</p>