SSAT Test Scores

Many parents are receiving their child’s SSAT test scores this week, and becoming frantic about the results. We hear parents telling us that their child is usually an A student, and they don’t understand why their child did not do better on the test. Many of the students who are typically getting all A’s are receiving 30%, 40%, or 50% on their SSAT test scores. We hear this time and again, and it is important to remember that this story is more common than you’d expect.

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.

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. 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. Fine-tuning your child’s test-taking strategies is the most important element in improving test scores in this short period of time. 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, we can help your child perfect his or her test-taking strategies in order to boost their test scores for the next SSAT test date. Using the score report as an accurate assessment tool, a private tutor will judge exactly how your child should better approach the test next time. Tutors can focus exclusively on the math, verbal, or reading sections, if your child needs to boost only one of these scores. Tutors 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.

Alexandra Berube
Managing Director
Boston Tutoring Services