<p>I do pretty well in Math and Verbal on my practice tests, but on Reading, I always get 4-5 wrong, which knocks me into the low 90ish percentiles. And I know its been reiterated on this forum that if you're in bs' "range" your SSAT doesn't matter, but I really want to do the best I can to completely assure Ill have a good chance of getting in. </p>
<p>Do you guys have any tips to help me improve my Reading score?</p>
<p>I've also noticed that according to PR's charts, you can miss quite a few on Math/Verbal and still get a really good score, but if you miss a few on Reading, your score goes way down, is this accurate and similar to the real test?</p>
<p>i thought if you missed a couple on Math really hurt you. I’ve seen people get a few wrong on vocab and get 97+ percentile. Last year (8th grade) I got one wrong on the Math section and got 94%. I’m sure if I got 4-5 wrong it would be low 80’s. I’m not sure about reading, I don’t remember how many I missed.</p>
<p>I got 75% - 695 with 9 wrong. But it is also the section with the fewest questions (40) so each question has a higher weight.</p>
<p>In verbal I got 76% - 719 with 16 wrong (haha). Since there are 60 questions, you can afford to get some wrong and still get a pretty high score.</p>
<p>(I know I have bad scores, retaking in Jan.)</p>
<p>I don’t know if this will help you, because I don’t know if there’s a pattern to the 4-5 questions you tend to miss, but there are a couple of things you can try:</p>
<p>1) Perhaps you’re missing questions because you’re tired, or rather, because your brain is tired. The SSAT reading section is long, much longer than the attention span of the typical student taking it. So you might want to take at least one quick break during the section. During the break(s), you can do any number of things – from drawing a small doodle to closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths – so long as you think about something other than the test. It only takes 20-30 seconds for the attention-span-clock to be reset so that you can focus again. But if you don’t consciously take the break, your brain will take it for you eventually, and you will miss questions you would have gotten if your mind had been refreshed.</p>
<p>2) It’s possible to learn to think like the writers of the SSAT. For example, every right answer has to be supported by what’s in the relevant passage, which I’m sure you already know. But think about it from the SSAT-writers’ perspective. If you give an answer to a question that you think is right and they think is wrong, you might decide to challenge their answer. And in that challenge, if you turned out to have picked a better answer than they did, they would have to either change their answer or omit that question, and re-score everyone’s test. That would be a huge problem and have serious implications for them. Since they don’t want to deal with situations like that, they make sure that every right answer is supported by at least one (often more than one) specific thing in the passage. So, when you’re choosing between two answer choices, go with the one that has the clearest support in the passage, or at least the one you think the SSAT would say has the most support. There isn’t always an objectively right answer to a reading question, and in those cases, it’s not really about which answer choice you think is better: it’s about which answer choice the SSAT thinks is better. That’s often the same thing, but not always.</p>
<p>The best strategy is to read the passage with a super skim (flyover), answer the questions you can. While you answer go back and verify. At least this is how I find it after thinking about it and practicing. PSAT I literally fell asleep in the middle of the reading. I know where you are coming from, it’s boring as can be.</p>