There is no longer a verbal section in the SAT.
^ They have the reading section, which is similar to the SSAT reading (I found the questions differed, obviously).
I didn’t have a lot of time to prep and memorize vocab, so I ended up doing better on SAT than SSAT because of a lack of vocab section. I sent in both scores to some schools that allowed it.
My kid did no prep. We looked at how the test rated wrong answers the night before. Scored a 99% overall ( perfect math pulled up the lowest score which was vocab). Not planning to have our younger ones study either. The kids are too busy.
We learned post test, many kids in town had been studying for a year plus. Who knew? Many parents hired tutors. Many had so-so scores when kids compared scores.
Not sure I’d support getting a tutor to get my kids into a school where they might struggle. Might consider it if it was just a bad testing thing. Or if they needed help in one area.
I think the test scores won’t get you in or keep you out unless you are really out of range. Or the kid is anearly bloomer in writing/math and can demonstrate mastery at an early age coupled with high test scores. Pretty rare but at top boarding schools kids are pretty stellar in 8th grade. Sadly, there are just too many qualified candidates.
Results on the SSAT are all about the percentile, not the absolute score. With percentile being the key issue, it is how students perform relative to other students. If other students are Prepping for the SSAT, then that is a big issue in terms of relative performance.
@Happytimes2001 and @Publisher - it’s great that your kids did fantastic on it with no prep. But the reality is the VAST majority of kids trying for well-known boarding schools Prep for it, and many have tutors. At a minimum, this prepping allows kids to understand the time management aspect of the test - which has very little to do with one’s “capability” at a challenging BS.
Prepping may give people an edge on vocab, or the reading passages, or math training, but if most people are doing it, then kids are at a huge disadvantage if they don’t Prep as well. Same thing for the SAT. I personally don’t know a single person who hasn’t prepped, nor whose %ile scores didn’t improve through practice and tutoring. Practice will generally win over non-practice, unless someone is stressed out or overwhelmed.
Kids should not feel bad about prepping, nor should they feel that somehow their 95th percentile is less valid if they prepped. Maybe studying 8 hours a day every day all summer is extreme, but who is to judge what constitutes too much prep or tutoring.
Lastly, I don’t believe for a second the well-known schools don’t deeply care about SSAT scores. The fact most of them superscore and use the superscore in calculating the school average tells us something. If you aren’t legacy, or development, or a recruited athlete, or sibling, or perhaps URM, your odds are way better if you score well above the school’s SSAT average, and international kids seem to never get in unless their scores are above average. If SSAT average didn’t matter, then one would expect to see some yearly fluctuations in schools’ SSAT averages. They seem to barely budge (to the extent we “know” what they are). It’s not luck that PA/PEA have 93/94% averages, nor luck that most of the rest are 85%-90%. These scores are the schools’ targets.
Prepping and using tutors is fine, especially since the vast majority applying to the well-known schools do it.
My point is that it is not good to put too much pressure on 13 year olds with respect to standardized testing & its consequences.
Strong students who familiarize themselves with the test & types of questions asked can do well with adequate rest. If unhappy with results, then try a bit of test prep. It will vary by child, but no one should be obsessed with the SSAT or a particular school in my opinion.
P.S. In some cases, the student needs a much more demanding curriculum & school environment & no adequate option is available within a reasonable commuting distance. That type of student may do well with a bit of familiarization with the test format & self prep.
@yynnbb re the official guide, we do not recall which sections were used. On quizlet, many of the data sets are similar. We sort of chose a little randomly and took one with the larger word count and the kid’s preferred study method. The funny thing is many of the words overlapped with the various books. The key to quizlet is that it is portable (cell phone). There were times when Swami Jr. was on a long car ride to a game or on a plane and I mentioned it might be a good opportunity to study a bit. 25% of the time he was already doing it, 25% of the time he would say good idea and do it and 50% of the time he would say no thanks.
If your kid has been attending a school controlled via Common Core, I suggest you have your kid study vocab and practice reading passages via a review resource. The content on the Reading section was very different from the content kids in our neck of the woods ever read in school (eg “Ye Olde English Poem”).
Really also depends on your kid. If you emphasize the importance of the test relative to all other factors in admissions then your kid will likely feel stress about it. Or, if you say go and do your best that is another thing entirely. I’d personally always go for taking the test the first time with limited/no prep. After all, don’t you want a baseline of where your kid actually is relative to others. If it’s done well in advance then you can fill in the blanks after the first go around.
Additionally, while so many on CC are hyper focused on Exeter and Andover, not all are. And I have spoken to many parents who push their kids into schools such as these where the kid might not be the strongest candidate. That’s a choice and certainly something to consider. While it seems logical to fill in the blanks. It doesn’t seem logical to have a tutor teach for a test for a year or more. Remember these kids are going to be up against kids whose backgrounds are really solid and didn’t need tutoring or needed very little to score in those ranges. When they enter BS their abilities are a factor.
We have seen many kids at BS drop down a level in math or science because they were placed in the highest level classes and could not perform relative to other students. My kid has told me many stories, some of them quite sad where the parents’ expectations are driving the kids education. The kids are stressed beyond belief and still are struggling daily. The parents are relentless. They keep pushing and pushing. The kids feel bad about themselves. The parents meet with the teachers. The students get tutors outside of BS. ( read this on CC though we don’t know of it locally). Where they could have shone at a lesser school, they are struggling in a top school. How does that make the kid a better person or college candidate?
We purposefully didn’t chose one of the top 3 ( mainly to get away from the status symbol education and its related effects). No regrets at all. We went for fit and our kid is shining.
It seems to be a current thing for parents to give their kids an edge in every respect ( tutoring, added classes, summer school etc) Yet, the kids aren’t excelling any more than their native abilities.
As a parents and as a society we need to rethink how we measure intellectual ability in terms of standardized tests. I’m certainly not against prepping a bit. What I am against is a hyper focused type A approach to the SSAT’s. Even with top scores, your kid has limited options. Ask anyone who has an academic kid knows many others who are very similar. There are still many more applicants than spots. And if you come from a region with top schools, you already know the pool is vast and deep for great candidates. Unless you are legacy, URM or from a state with few applicants, your kid will be competing against top students for a spot. Does this mean that you have to study for a year to raise your scores? Seems like many parents think is the path. Do these parents also think that 800 scores will get their child into an IVY? Maybe they do.
I think parents would be very surprised to learn that SSAT scores are a small part of the puzzle. Schools want kids who are a good fit. If the kid can do the work, that’s a check in the right box.
@yynnbb I did see some words that I studied while taking the test, but not “lots”. The lists DID give me a better understanding of word roots, however, which allowed me to make educated guesses on words I didn’t know. Good luck!