<p>top prep schools list their average SSAT as around 95th percentile</p>
<p>because the SSAT is normed from a smaller and more selective population this is claimed to be equivalent to an SAT percentile of approximately 98th or 99th percentile</p>
<p>now give these entrants four years of the best education money can buy. You are bound to have kids who get at least the 98th or 99th percentile - right?</p>
<p>wrong!</p>
<p>if you look at the average sat results from top prep schools they are amazingly low. Say around 700. (a little higher in math). And this is most certainly not the 98th or 99th percentile.</p>
<p>A score of 700 on an SAT section “amazingly low”? Uh, not really, I would think that “amazingly low” would be more like a score of 200-300 on a section. </p>
<p>And where is it claimed that the SSAT percentile is equivalent to the SAT percentile?</p>
<p>I think peteya was talking about the predicted SAT scores on the SSAT report. I remember they were pretty wide ranges. I don’t know if we should expect an average 98%/99% SAT based on an average 95% SSAT. It does sound like they should do better on SAT though. Then again, as many students on CC reported, they get in with much lower SSAT scores. I am not even sure if the high average SSAT published is accurate.</p>
<p>That’s just that…a prediction from one test what some other test is going to score like. Maybe that had a really good day on the SSAT and had high predicted scores for the SAT but then were a kinda sick on SAT day and didn’t do quite as well as predicted. In the SATs they’re going up against a much bigger population than they were with the SSATs. </p>
<p>I guess I just don’t really think that just because you have an SSAT in the 99% you should also have an SAT in the 99%. There are a whole lot more kids taking the SAT than there are taking the SSAT and just because kids are in prep school doesn’t mean they’re the brightest kids taking the SATs, there’s smart kids in public schools that can get a high percentile on the SATs.</p>
<p>SAT scores are just scores from one stupid test. Maybe a kid woke up late and got panicked and flustered right before the test, maybe they got sick, maybe they’re just not good test takers. There are bright kids with great educations that bomb standardized tests.</p>
<p>The 98%+ SAT takers from BS have been stress tested, away from home, they will succeed at least in the freshman year in college academically. This is more than can be said for any HS kid with high SAT scores but no tempering in the world of the Prep School.
Of course the HS kid might be ok in a high stress academic Ivy league environment, but the Prep School kid is a way better bet for success! I would put my money on the Prep School kid any day!</p>
<p>Its much easier to have high ssat scores, rather than sat. It sometimes needs one or two prep hours explaining the “tricks” of the test to raise your % from 60’s to 90’s. Not so with the SAT. The reason that a lot of prep school kids scores are around 700, is that 2,100 is the magic number for colleges, especially from private schools. To any college a kid coming from a private school, with identical grades and an sat score of 2,100 or 2,350 – there is no difference. This is where the holistic approach to admission will be crucial.</p>
<p>The highest I’ve been able to find was Andover, at the 93rd percentile. Please let me know if you know of a school with a higher percentile, although I think we can agree that PA is a top prep school?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>? I’ve never read that. I’d be glad to read the source for this assertion. The SSAT and the SAT are different tests. The SSAT organization provides a predicted range for the SAT, but that’s only based on a study of SSAT takers. It’s a guess, not a science. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They’d better not be sitting around in four years of test prep, is all I can say. That wouldn’t be the “best education money can buy.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The Scholastic Aptitude Test was not designed to diagnose the brilliant, although it is often misused for that purpose. Students who score in the '90s are outliers. </p>
<p>It’s more interesting to look at the other side of the range. The difference between scoring in the 95th or 98th percentile on the SAT really isn’t interesting. </p>
<p>Dana Hall, for example, lists an average SSAT score of 65%. The students who score in the 25th SAT percentile at Dana Hall score 1690. That’s very close to the average score for kids scoring in the 75th percentile nationally on the SATs (1640), and well above kids scoring at the 50th percentile nationally (1500).</p>
<p>The good prep schools seem to select bright to very bright student bodies, but they don’t get tied up in SAT test prep. I find that to be a good thing.</p>
<p>94% is the Andover number. I think that’s peteya was referring to when she said around 95%. I agree SAT is just one test, and once it reaches a certain level it doesn’t make much of a difference to score 20/30 points more either in judging the student’s ability or in helping his college application. We are not sending our kids to these top schools for achieving higher SAT scores, which can be done in much easier and cheaper ways!</p>
<p>Yeah, 700 is very high. I cannot remember which percentile he received but through a talent search which utilized the SAT a friend of mine got like a percentile in the 90s and it was not even 750.</p>
<p>It is easy to lose track, among this talented BS lot, of just how low the average American college bound senior scores on the SAT. Before my son took the SAT for CTY, he asked how well he needed to do to qualify. I told him that he needed to do better than the average high school senior, but not to worry, that only meant that he needed to get about half of the points. Then, when we got his results, I tried to temper any inflated ego by noting that doing better than the average American 18 year old doesn’t really say a whole lot. It’s not a very lofty goal, even for a 12 year old.</p>
<p>Before reading this thread I had no idea what the average SAT score was, so I went looking. From the collegeboard site:
2008 College-Bound Seniors’ Average Scores
Critical reading: 502
Mathematics: 515
Writing: 494 </p>
<p>I’d like to think that America is in the process of shaping up. Maybe displaying some intellect every now and again will become socially acceptable now that we have a president who doesn’t represent the country’s lowest common denominator.</p>
<p>And… maybe people will stop using the word “gay” as a synonym for stupid. That’s one of my major “pet peeves…”</p>
I would put my money on the Prep School kid any day!</p>