<p>Hey all!
So, I took the test bright and early this morning (Well, technically, it's midnight, so yesterday [Good morning, by the way!])
I personally found Section 5 (It's kinda the bane of my existence) as well as the first math section to be a little bit difficult, but reading and vocabulary were a piece of cake, personally. I'm in 10th grade at a pretty tough school right now, and even I found myself thinking "What in God's name is this?!" for the first quantitative section.
Any other parents/applicants think there was anything particularly easy or difficult about the test?</p>
<p>Test UN 15 (or are they all the same?)</p>
<p>I remember I had UN 10… A girl next to me had UN 12. Do you know what the difference is? I thought it had something to do with the essay prompts, but I’m not too sure.
@ItsJustSchool </p>
<p>No clue. I think Section 5 was “unscored experimental” questions. 16 questions?</p>
<p>@ItsJustSchool That wasn’t graded?! Phew! I found that one to be the most difficult. Yep, the 16 questions. Okay, knowing that one wasn’t scored is a huge relief.</p>
<p>No expert, but that is what “Cracking the SSAT” seemed to indicate.</p>
<p>DD thought the second math section was difficult, and, outside of one math question, pretty much guessed on Section 5. I do think Section 5 was experimental, especially since there were a variety of question types on it (math, verbal, etc). </p>
<p>@ItsJustSchool I looked it up and yes, it isn’t scored. It’s kind of like “feedback” for the test makers, apparently.</p>
<p>@momonymous I personally found the second math section <em>relatively</em> easy for me, but who knows? It wasn’t what I expected from practice, so I’m probably going to retake the test in December.</p>
<p>My daughter thought that one of the quantitative sections was pretty hard, I think she skipped a lot of it.</p>
<p>@soxmom They were both relatively difficult, to say the least.</p>
<p>My daughter is rising 9th grader. Currently in Algebra. She is a 99% national test taker and was running mid80-low 90% on practice SSATs.
Her math was often in the 80% with an occasional dip into 70s. </p>
<p>She and we felt she was as prepared as could be. Section 1 omitted the last 4 question bc she ran out of time. Section 2 better.
Said despite prep, a lot of stuff she has never seen. </p>
<p>Feel bad. Gut says back in December. </p>
<p>I hope the practice tests were self-scored so that you could see how many can be missed and still get a relatively high score. Recall that this test covers students who are currently in 8-12 grade. If you are at the lower end of that range, you should expect to miss the questions that cover concepts from 12th grade and still perform at the upper end of your classmates. In other words, don’t even think about the scores until they are reported to you. As a reminder, I reprint below material from the official website, <a href=“http://www.ssat.org/test/about-the-ssat:”>http://www.ssat.org/test/about-the-ssat:</a></p>
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<p>The SSAT is a norm-referenced test. A norm-referenced test interprets an individual test-taker’s score relative to the distribution of scores for a comparison group, referred to as the norm group. The SSAT norm groups consist of all the test takers (same grade/same grade & gender) who have taken the test for the first time on one of the Standard Saturday or Sunday SSAT administrations in the United States and Canada over the past three years. The SSAT reports percentile ranks, which are referenced to the performance of the norm group. For example, if you are a boy in the 8th grade, and your percentile rank on the March 2013 verbal section is 90%, it means that 90% of all the other 8th grade boys’ (who have taken the test for the first time on one of the Standard Saturday or Sunday SSAT administrations in the United States and Canada between 2009 and 2012) scores fall below your scaled score.</p>
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<p>Yes. Self-scored. Hope for best. School she is looking at is day prep 85% and up. Think ok there but math in the low 70s or below could look bad. </p>
<p>Our local private schools do not disclose SSAT averages for admittance. Just word of mouth, which is very random.
Anyone know good way to judge?
The local private prep has amazing reputation and college placement.
Feel 85% is high, though, given that is what boarding schools want. </p>
<p>I got every one of the reading comprehension questions right on one of the practice tests, but I thought it was reading comp was really difficult on the real SSAT!</p>
<p>Well, the results are now posted on the SSAT portal!</p>
<p>Hmm… 77th%ile overall. I can do better, math was my real challenge, personally!</p>
<p>Yay! Congratulations to all the students who have come this far. You can retake in January, and study up first! That score puts you in a pretty good range for many schools.</p>
<p>I’m so surprised! I got 95 quantitative, 96 reading, 98 verbal, and 98 overall. The test was pretty difficult for me though, and I was expecting to do much worse! </p>