Which score to submit for east coast prep school admission?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
1

My child is applying to a handful of prep schools for 8th grade.She took her ISEE as well as the SSAT for the first time
and didn’t score as well as she had hoped. Clearly vocabulary and and the analogy section caused her some harm :frowning:

A few of our schools will accept either score. Looking for advice on which one to submit? both?

ISEE-
V-872, 35%, Stanine 4
R-899, 78%, Stanine 7
Q-879, 53%, Stanine 5
M-898, 76%, Stanine 6

SSAT-
T Scale-1971, 65%,
V-625 =34%
Q-677 =81%
R-673 =79%

2

Dear optimistic7,

I don’t think your kid’s scores are bad at all. She seems like a great kid. I would submit both for schools that take both just to give them a better idea to evaluate. My daughter is applying to the 6th and I was bummed with her scoring on ISEE too.

Good Luck!

possessedmom

3

Dear Possessedmom,

Thank you so much for your reply and the positive note of hope :slight_smile: Tough to see numbers like this when you are used to landing in the high nineties in her district. However, I have tried to explain that she is up against the top kids in all school districts. She took these two tests without any prep so if it doesn’t work for 8th grade, she will do some prep work and hopefully bring up scores for entrance to 9th! Good luck to your daughter too!

4

SSAT. The Verbal and Reading percentiles are essentially identical between the SSAT and ISEE. The SSAT Quantitative percentile breaks the tie from what I can see. The 81 percentile beats the two ISEE math percentiles (53, 76).

5

Many kids take the SSAT multiple times, and their scores usually go up. Could she take it again in January or February? The Verbal section isn’t too hard to prep for, so she could focus on that only, by doing vocal on quizlet and learning some test-taking strategies for that section.

6

SSAT alone.

7

Thank you so much for those of you that took the time to respond! Very helpful responses. I think we will submit the SSAT score that we have and see how it shakes out. She has just sat through two long and mentally exhausting tests so I don’t want her to have to do that again so soon. If it doesn’t work out for 8th grade, lots of Quizlet practice and we will be back at it for 9th! Thank you to all for the advice :slight_smile:

8

Definitely SSAT, @optomistic7. BTDT with son #1 years back. Both tests went pretty well for him but for some reason, the SSAT was still better. Best of luck!