I recently received my scores for the December SSAT. I received vocabulary and reading in the 90s, however my quantitative section came out in the 50s. I was reading on the forum and seen that having big differences in scores could cause red flags when AOs are looking at scores? So, basically i was just wondering how much of a big deal is this, and why is it such a red flag?
I got pretty much the same thing… 800 in both reading and vocab and 60th percentile in quantitative. For the school I’m applying to this gap doesn’t really seem to matter much. What schools are you applying to?
I suppose the reason for this “red flag” idea is that MANY (not all) AOs will see your great reading scores but then wonder why you did not do well on the math section. Honestly, I think this is stupid because math is a skill that you can improve pretty quickly upon, compared to reading skills which is harder to improve. Also, don’t worry because you are not expected to know geometry yet if you are in 8th grade currently. But, let me know what schools you’re applying to. It may be more of a “red flag” at schools such as Exeter or Andover, but at Thacher it apparently is not a big deal whatsoever.
Haha yeah of course I chose to apply to Andover and Exeter, I also applied to two other smaller schools
Thanks for your answer though
For the tippy top schools having good scores on both sections is important. They fundamentally want to knowing you can handle the work. 50th percentile is by no means bad. It means you scored in the middle of a very selective group.
This should probably be moved to the prep school forum.
It’s a red flag because top schools will understand that your math skills aren’t as good as the rest of their applicants, which could be fatal to schools who value more on mathematics. It also makes them wonder if you didn’t study hard/well enough and why. I’m not an expert, but that’s what I’d think if I was an AO looking at your scores. But again, I read that Ao’s only look at the overall score, so you might be okay. Kudos to you for amazing verbal and reading scores though.
Oh I see. It might be an issue at Exeter, because I think they put a lot of weight on math. But remember, the SSAT is only part of the application.
Consider that schools do different things with those scores. One school my DD applied to recalculates as follows: Reading Comp + 2x Quant Reasoning - Vocab. So, vocab is tossed and math counts double. But again, this is only “one part” and a perfect reading score is always impressive.
I agree with @Kthor626 - they will probably pay much more attention to your high reading scores.