I assume that the SSAT scores are looked at in a 3D analysis to some degree. First the SSAT is acquired knowledge. Even the analogies are vocabulary sensitive. So the results can be skewed by the quality and depth of education. Certainly prepping can mitigate some of that but not all. My child (private school and test in public) has always scored 99% on every test through 6th grade . Modified IQ, ERBs, and ISEE. SSAT two years ago was 96%. This year I don’t know yet. I saw some real problem areas that concerned me. School (public) the last three years has been mediocre.
My 8th grader recently got her SSAT scores, and I am sharing here just as a reference for other parents (because some of us have kids that aren’t amazing at math!). She is NOT applying to BS, but to one local day school. Her overall score for girls was 90%, 88% for both boys and girls. She scored 86% on the verbal section, 58% on the quant (ouch) and 99% on reading comprehension. The director of admission told me not to worry, because they know the caliber of students who take the SSAT around the world skews the results. Her raw score on quant was 675/800 and that was 58% amongst this group. Tough crowd to compete against! Hopefully this info will help someone feel better…
In case it is interesting to anyone our 8th grader’s math percentiles on the ISEE was around +20 percentile points above her SSAT math score. I don’t know why.
@cupajo that is interesting! We had our daughter take the SSAT rather than the ISEE because we were already familiar with the test because our 11th grader had taken it. She took it once - we felt her percentile was an accurate reflection of her abilities, and it would be very difficult for her to move the needle significantly on the math section. However, a neighbor told me recently that the ISEE was much easier for her child after taking both tests. Oh well.