SSAT Scores are In

October SSAT scores are in. If your child’s SSAT scores were not as high as you had hoped, there’s no need to fear. Private schools recommend that students take the SSAT test more than once, so it is to your child’s advantage to take the test again.

When students take SSAT practice tests, they don’t always get the best real-world experience in how they will perform on test day. When they take the administered SSAT test for the first time, students will then have a better idea of where their strengths and weaknesses lie. They can see this first real test as an accurate representation of how they would do next time, if they did not prepare any more before taking the test again.

The score report that you received lists a breakdown of how your child did on the test. It will not only tell you their scaled scores and percentiles, but it will tell you how many questions they attempted, how many they skipped, and how many they got wrong. This score report tells your child how to move forward in test preparation, so they will know exactly what to focus on.

It is important that students know exactly how to approach the SSAT test. Since they take a quarter of a point off for each wrong answer, it is important for your child to skip, or omit, certain questions. The score report will help your child understand how many they got wrong and how many they skipped, and how this affected their score. If your child is skipping far too many questions and not attempting enough, this may be one reason they did not get enough points.

If your child is not skipping any and is getting a lot of problems wrong, this is a good chance to start fixing that problem. Students need to know that they should only attempt a question if they can eliminate at least two answer choices. If they cannot eliminate at least two answer choices they should skip the problem. Overall, test-taking strategies will greatly improve your child’s scores, as they learn how many questions they should be attempting and how many they should be omitting.

Because private school admission officers recommend that students take the test more than once, now is the perfect time to start private tutoring to enhance your child’s test-taking strategies and their ability to perform well on this test. Using the score report as an accurate assessment tool, a private tutor can judge exactly how your child should better approach the test next time. They will instruct on any new content and make sure your child knows exactly how many questions they should be skipping and how many they should be attempting, based on their individual strengths and weaknesses.

Private schools will Superscore your child’s test, which means they take the highest score of each section from your child’s test scores. For example, if the first time your child does much better on the verbal, and the second time your child does much better on the math, the private schools will use the highest score from each test, and piece these together for your child’s admission packet. This is why it is so important to take the test more than once to give your child the best chance of private school admission.

Alexandra Berube
Managing Director
Boston Tutoring Services