<p>Is there anywhere that shows how many questions you need to answer in order to get an xx percentile score, by grade level? To kick off SSAT prep, DC took a practice test, from the official guide. That guide only has a score chart with percentiles for the Upper Level test as a whole, not broken down by grade level. PR has the same chart. The Kaplan book has median scores by grade level. </p>
<p>From these charts, it's very difficult to tell how well DC did on the practice test. DC is going into 8th, so comparing to the whole 8th-11th percentiles isn't really helpful, and we're shooting for well above the median score, so the Kaplan chart has limited usefulness too.</p>
<p>Basically, I'd like to know about how many questions an 8th grader needs to get correct for each section in order to score above the 80th percentile. But of course, I understand that's pretty specific. Any help would be appreciated. TIA</p>
<p>I don’t think this sort of thing is outlined anywhere. You could research how many points are given for a correct answer (I think it’s one) and how many are deducted for an incorrect (I think it’s one-fourth of a point) and then calculate a raw score, but that still won’t give the score out of 800 like you need. </p>
<p>What I would do is figure out how well he did against everyone taking the upper level test. If he scored above the school average against everyone, great! You know he’ll score well against eighth graders. If not, you can evaluate what the percentile actually is and possibly arrange for a fall testing date- that way, you can take it again if needed. </p>
<p>Thank you, pdl100 and mrnephew, for your responses. The book does outline the scoring, and you’re right…it’s one point for correct answers and -1/4 for incorrect answers. I don’t have the book in front of me at the moment, but I think DC did score above the 50th percentile overall (all grades). But definitely not 99th percentile. (We wouldn’t be having this conversation of that was the case, haha.) 99th percentile would be nice, but DC doesn’t have a lot of experience with standardized tests, so at this point my hope is that the SSAT score is a non-issue, i.e. that DC scores high enough that it meets the minimum threshold for consideration at the most selective schools on our list. </p>
<p>That’s going to be tough, as some of the top ones have around a 90~ percentile average, but I’m pretty sure a 95 compared to a 99 isn’t going to be the thing that sinks you.</p>
<p>Yes, I meant the most selective <em>on our list</em>, not the most selective in the country. We’re looking at day schools in the Boston area, but many of those are still very selective.</p>
<p>The prep books (Kaplan, Princeton, etc, etc) are NOT published by the SSAT organization; therefore, the test questions in the prep books only approximate the questions on the actual SSAT test. The prep book test questions are not “pre-tested”, vetted & carefully calibrated the way the actual questions are. I have noticed typos & errors in the SSAT prep books-- they are not as well edited as SAT prep books.</p>
<p>You should not take your results from prep book practice tests as an accurate indication of your real SSAT performance-- they tend to inflate expectations. You should use the practice tests for just that: PRACTICE.</p>
<p>Inflate expectations? To the contrary, I ended up scoring better on the actual test than the practice tests, thus suggesting a deflation of expectations.</p>
<p>Thanks, GMTplus7, I’ll keep that in mind. We used a practice test from “The Official Guide” from the SSAT website, but I believe that’s still not an actual test. </p>
<p>Momonymous, I assume you must live in the Boston metro area. If so, there’s a test prep/tutoring company called Summit Education, which will let your kid do two practice SSATs for free. They administer them in a proctored, timed environment at their office in Newton, so it’s a much better indicator of how your child will do than just doing it at home out of a book. We had my daughter do one in May, to start preparing for next fall, and she was surprised at how nervous she was going to take it, even though she knew it was just practice. Better to get some of the nerves out of the way now!</p>
<p>@soxmom, thanks! Good to know. Do they also do the ISEE? DC#2 needs to take that one. And do the give you any indication of approximate/projected/guesstimated percentile score?</p>
<p>I think they do ISEE too, but I’m sure the website will tell you. And yes, they tell you what the percentile score would have been. In the event that you end up wanting some tutoring for your kids, they use the test results to see what they need to focus on the most. But even if you don’t use Summit for tutoring, the practice tests are free. </p>
<p>@soxmom My kids did the practice tests at Summit this week and I just got the score reports. I don’t see percentiles, though. They give raw scores, and then the same chart that was in the study guides, which gives a percentile based on the raw score for the Upper Level test as a whole, but doesn’t distinguish between grade level at all. I don’t find it particularly helpful for an 8th grader, applying to 9th.</p>
<p>Did you have to request something special to get a reasonable sense of percentile score?</p>
<p>@momonymous, sorry for the delay in responding, we’d been on vacation and I just saw this. I hadn’t appreciated, until you pointed it out, that the chart on estimated percentiles isn’t distinguished by grade level. Guess I didn’t read the explanation closely enough! You’re right that it would certainly help to have it done by grade level, no doubt. But this actually makes me feel a little bit better about her results, since comparing her scores only to other 8th graders would have to make her percentiles go up. I’m talking to Summit tomorrow about some tutoring for her, so if I learn anything more about how to interpret the practice test, I’ll let you know. </p>
<p>To make sure I am understanding this question, it seems to me you are asking if there is a way to get percentiles by grade for practice SSATs to know where your 8th graders stands against other 8th graders. My understanding was that this information is not available to you or to schools even on the real test. I may be wrong, but I thought the only percentiles you or the schools would be given were those comparing your child to all other grade levels that took the Upper Level test that round. </p>
<p>I have often wondered what the differences between grade levels might be. Seems to me that a rising 10th grader of equal intellectual horsepower should be able to outperform a rising 8th grader just due to testing experience and material familiarity. If I were an AO considering applicants, I might look at an 8th graders 85% overall the same way I would look at a 10th grader’s 95% overall…However, I am not sure any such statistics or measures are made public, or given to the schools. If anyone knows this to be different, please let me know!</p>
<p>You can’t figure out the exact percentiles ahead, because they are recalculated for that specific test date (comparing scores on that particular test to others by grade and gender, averaged for tests over last 3 years). Percentiles ABSOLUTELY take grade and gender into account-- so an 85%ile in 8th grade should be comparable to an 85%ile for 10th grade for the AO. But for those practice tests, you can’t really figure out the percentile by grade ahead of time-- so, yes, you can feel like your practice score as an 8th grader will look a little better once those percentiles are calculated. But because it gets recalculated for each test date (to take into account the fact that some tests may inadvertently be slight easier or harder), no one knows the exact percentiles ahead. Here’s the official SSAT explanation:
“The SSAT Percentile (1 to 99) compares the student’s performance on the SSAT with that of other students of the same grade and gender who have taken the SSAT in the U.S. and Canada on a Standard test date in the previous three years. For students who have taken the SSAT more than once, only their first set of scores is included in the norming process.”
The other thing to remember, of course, is that it would be pretty unusual to get EXACTLY the same on the practice test and real test anyway, since the questions will be different. </p>