<p>I decided to wait and take the January 8th SSAT so I would have the maximum time to study. I only decided to apply to boarding school in October, so I wasn't allotted that much time to study.
Today I got my scores in and they were far below what I had expected. If I am reading the paper right, they are:</p>
<p>Verbal- 70%
Math- 45% -- WHAT I AM THE BEST IN MATH???!
Reading- 75%</p>
<p>I am a ninth grader who makes straight As in school and is always in the top percentile on every state mandated test each year. I also live a great deal away from the East Coast which makes me at an advantage. I am confident in all other aspects of my already submitted application, but these scores are astonishing! </p>
<p>I am applying to HADES and I know that due to the competition, I have been significantly set back, but I would like an honest opinion if I am set back so far that I ought to loose hope in my acceptance. Before these scores I was very confident, probably overly confident... Tomorrow I am going to call the school and ask if there's any chance I could take the February 5th SSAT, though will they really improve in such little time? </p>
<p>@urbangirl,
Your scores are not in the range of most applicants to HADES schools. However, the SSAT is only one portion of the admissions process, so having low scores won’t immediately kill your application. I’d do what you’re doing (call the schools and ask for the February test) if I was in your position. A couple of other things about the SSAT:</p>
<p>1) The reading and math sections are scored very harshly. I missed a few problems on the math and I got a 78%.</p>
<p>2) Schools look at your background when taking the SSAT into account. For example, if you come from a private “feeder” school, you better have a 90’s SSAT score. However, if you come from an underfunded public school, having a low SSAT score won’t kill your application.</p>
<p>3) According to admissions officers at Andover, they look at the SSAT last. And that grades and recommendations are factored much more heavily than the SSAT.</p>
<p>4) Get a tutor for the math. I thought I was pretty good at math (I’m not a “math person”, but I do alright) when I first took the SSAT. The first time I took it, I got a 59% in math. With two sessions of cheap tutoring, I improved my score almost to a 78%. The point is, even with a small amount of time, you can improve that score.</p>
<p>5) If you are aiming for a score on par with most HADES applicants, aim for a 90% overall, with most sections being fairly consistent. (You want something along the lines of: 92 math, 86 reading, 90 verbal NOT 99 math, 45 reading, 80 verbal)</p>
<p>Good luck and I hope you can take the February test.</p>
<p>Thank you very much, and I did have a math tutor, many in fact.
Since I’m in Algebra 1 right now, I have little knowledge of geometry so I worked heavily on those subjects.
In school, though, I am the top of my class and I, along with another student, recently was the only kid in all my math teacher’s classes to score commended (like 90 or above) on our state benchmarks which in my state are as important as it gets.
I do have a question, what exactly does omitting a question do to your score? Like for Math, and just in general, is it better to omit any of the ones you think you might get wrong or is it better to do all the ones you kind of sort of know?
I’m not talking about guessing but I’m basically asking, if there are 50 questions and I omit 20, and get all 30 right, do I get a perfect score?</p>
<p>I’m just really confused with the omitting thing!</p>
<p>No, you get 30/50. The total number of questions doesn’t change based on how many you answer. You only get credit for the questions you answer correctly, no credit for the ones you skip and -1/4 for each wrong one. So if you get 4 wrong, not only do you not get points for those 4 questions, but it takes away one point from the ones you got right.</p>
<p>My understanding is that it is not uncommon for kids who do really well on state tests and such to be surprised by their ssat scores. I think there is actually a paragraph about that on the score report. Compare your math percentile to the “national” percentile at the bottom of the page. It’s probably over 90, isn’t it. This is because you are not being compared with the average American kid, you’re being compared to a highly competitive, self-selected group of kids.</p>
<p>State tests measure the minimum grade level requirements. It sounds like you are currently in a very small pond.</p>
<p>But I wouldn’t throw in the towel yet! If you’ve been in public school all your life, you’re probably not used to those kind of math problems. Personally, I think they’re more reading comp than arithmetic questions!</p>
<p>I have been in public school my whole life and the main reason why I am wanting to go to boarding school is so that I can be challenged. Yes, the state mandated tests are easy, I just feel that I am a smart person and very curious regardless of the standard I’m held to at public school; I hope these boarding schools can see that.
I do not want to sound like I’m making excuses for my score, though.</p>
<p>What do you think schools think of when they see a curious student who makes straight-As and receives academic awards at her factory of a high school?</p>
<p>And about the scoring, you are saying that if there are 50 total math questions and I omit six, the highest I can get already is a 46 so to speak…right?</p>
<p>Your percentile depends upon the performance of students of the same gender and grade, as your score is compared to a normed sample. </p>
<p>You could have misbubbled. It happens. Or, your state’s standards for math preparation are not as high as other states. At any rate, at this point, don’t worry about it. The schools will get much more information on you than your SSAT score. They do look for geographical diversity, so don’t despair.</p>
<p>If you get in, and decide to go, I’d suggest spending time working on math skills. Try [ALEKS</a> – Assessment and Learning, K-12, Higher Education, Automated Tutor, Math](<a href=“http://Aleks.com%5DALEKS”>http://Aleks.com), or a good textbook. </p>
<p>Please consider that you may have a very strong hand already in your home state. If you’re at the top in an underrepresented state, that could be very helpful for college admissions. </p>
<p>Cutoffs for contests such as the National Merit Scholarships are set by state. At home, you could be a real standout.</p>
<p>If you’re going to take the test again in February (which I think is a good idea) then I would recommend you try to do some test prep beforehand.</p>
<p>My son self-studied using the Princeton Review book (“Cracking the SSAT and ISEE, 2011 Edition”). It normally costs about $20 - I just checked amazon.com, and they have it on sale for $12.</p>
<p>It had a lot of good tips and strategies, and explained when it was in your favor to guess on a question, and when it was better to omit it. He felt like he was prepared for the test, and knew what to expect.</p>
Why do they downplay the importance of SSAT while taking every chance to make the world know that their average SSAT score of every incoming class is 93-94%? Are they using SSAT to level the playground to put grades students get from middle schools of varying rigor into perspective, or are they using it to “break a tie”?</p>
<p>@DAndrew,
The point of the SSAT is to see how well you are prepared compared to other applicants. If you come from a fancy “feeder” school, most likely your score will be higher than the score of a kid from an underfunded public school. I think the SSAT can be used to assess the rigor of you current school. And, if you didn’t come from an academically rigorous background, I don’t think they would throw your application about because of an SSAT score. And, I also don’t think that admissions officer would use an SSAT score to, “break a tie.” Essays, recs, and interviews I bet are used as “tie breakers.”</p>
<p>DAndrew, I have a different interpretation to that “SSAT last” bit. Everyone takes it as a metaphor, that is, the least important part of the file. I understood it to be the last document in the file. The AOs read everything else in the file–school reports, interviews, student essays, lists of awards and ECs–before they get to the SSAT score. </p>
<p>Most of the time, the score is in line with the rest of the file, so it doesn’t make a difference (IMHO). If the grades, recs, and application’s not impressive, a high SSAT score won’t make the AO like the application more. If the SSAT score’s lower than the AO would expect, but he likes everything else, it doesn’t mean the candidate is doomed. Then, other factors come into play, such as student background, and other evidence of potential.</p>
<p>I think they publish the scores because everyone asks. If they kept it secret, people would make outrageous guesses.</p>
No. I think they present it as a “selling point”, something appealing about the school. Then they don’t want people to think that a 99% SSAT is all it takes while in fact high SSAT score is just a given (think about it: if 94% is the average, it takes one 99% to balance out even a 89%, so the range or standard deviation can’t be too big). It’s true that grades and recs are more important, but with an applicant pool like this they are just not enough to differentiate the winners.</p>
<p>Which is why I have questioned this statistic. If 30,000 kids take the SSAT in a given year then statistically, only 3300 score 89+ and 1800 of those 3300 score 94+</p>
<p>Andover states that it received 2910 completed applications. It doesn’t seem like there would be enough kids, statistically, with those top scores to supply all these schools with median scores at 90+. I don’t know. I am so far from being a statistician, but something doesn’t seem possible. It just seems like, in order for Andover to have that high of a percentile, practically all the top scoring kids would have to apply there. Maybe they do! I don’t know.</p>
<p>Maybe someone who is good at this sort thing can explain it to me, but it would probably be too complicated for me to understand. ;)</p>
<p>@neato: The average SSAT score that Andover publishes is the average SSAT score of admitted or attending students. I’m not sure which, but it is NOT the average of the applicants who are applying. Any of the 30,000 SSAT test takers can apply to Andover and it won’t effect Andover’s average. So to keep their SSAT average high, Andover must accept strictly those 3300 students who score 89+ (with a few exceptions).</p>
<p>@urbangirl
Given your interest in east coast boarding schools, and being a good student at public school, there are many other boarding schools besides HADES that are challenging that may suit you. Several of them have Jan 31/Feb 1 application deadlines. Look at boarding school review.com. Your SSATs shouldn’t define you, nor should you limit yourself to the most competitive schools. Many a student has graduated from non HADES school and gone on to the college that suited them and been successful.</p>
<p>DAndrew, in general, high grades, great recs, and the ability to participate in ECs will correlate with high SSATs. If you have to study every free moment to make great grades, you won’t have any ECs. </p>
<p>I do not think they need to look at the SSATs in many cases. The AOs can tell who has a large vocabulary and thinks on her feet from the interviews. </p>
<p>As Andover’s Dean of Admissions said, low grades and high SSATs will not get you in. I would bet almost every ambitious family in the Northeast applies to Andover and Exeter. They don’t need to beat the bushes to keep up the SSAT average. </p>
<p>I think they use the SSAT score to judge whether students are working up to their potential. That’s why it’s not an advantage to be seen as an underachiever.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know. This is where it gets tricky.</p>
<p>Let’s say a school (because it’s not just Andover that makes me scratch my head, it’s all the top school put together) says the average admitted ssat is 94 percentile and they admit 424 students. If they admit a group of 50 kids whose ssat averages to 85 and 50 kids who average to 80, then the remaining 324 kids who are admitted have an average of 97.5, which, statistically speaking, only 750 of ALL the kids who took the ssat in a year get. So, if every kid who gets 97+ applies to that school, they have a statistical admit rate of close to 50%, but that assumes that EVERY kid who scores at that level applies to the school. All of them probably don’t, so that statistical admit rate is likely even higher.</p>
<p>So, either schools that publish a super high ssat average put a great deal of importance on the high ssat score or something is off on the numbers (which considering I did them, is likely).</p>