<p>I know that we were supposed to take the SSAT with 2B pencils, but I took it with a 2HB pencils because I lost my pencil case and there weren't anyone I could borrow a 2B pencil from.</p>
<p>Which resulted in
-an essay that looked like it was very misspelled and untidy
-a 45th percentile</p>
<p>Could it be because I didn't fill in the circles properly?</p>
<p>The essay is not graded. It just gets sent w the test scores to the schools, as a sample of your writing.</p>
<p>It’s just #2 pencils according to admission ticket. so it must have been the circles</p>
<p>I used a mechanical pencil that said it was #2 and was alright to use for scantrons… I actually ran into problems with the normal #2 pencils because it was heavy and didn’t erase properly on some of the answers that I put down. Do you think faint gray marks will be misread?</p>
<p>@bianca for a fee, if you think it was the pencil or a scantron issue, collegeboard will score it by hand!</p>
<p>Just wondering how did you see that your essay appeared untidy?</p>
<p>Everything looked like it was misspelled on the sample scan.</p>
<p>Well I assume if you used the wrong pencil/pen on the multiple choice, the scantron machine wouldn’t be able to read it at all, and it would say you left all answers blank, and you would get a 0%. (That’s what happens if you use a pen). But you said you did get a score (higher than 0), so I believe the machine was able to read it properly.</p>
<p>However, I could be totally wrong. The best solution would be to email them and ask for your test to be hand graded.
Good luck!</p>