January SSAT

[Anonymous]

My DS sat for the SSAT yesterday, and he came home very discouraged, saying it was much harder than the prep tests. He had been prepared with the Princeton Review SSAT book and the actual SSAT review materials (so prior used SSAT tests, presumably). Did anyone else's child report the same? I feel so badly for him, as he worked so hard to prepare. TIA.

[Anonymous]

My kid said the test was harder in certain sections than others. But generally her score was similar to what she was scoring at home. In the practice tests at home she never did a whole test in one sitting--something I feel we should have done and she complained after taking the test that the test was very long (with the instructions it was 3 and 1/2 hours). In one section, she thought she did worse than she actually did. In other words, you kid may be reacting to the length of the test and the pressure of taking it and may have done much better than he thinks. Good luck to both of you.

[Anonymous]

I started a similar thread about 3 weeks ago on the SSAT -- I thought it was just too much to ask of such a young kid. In the end the scores have come and actually DC did pretty well, better than I thought. So you never know. But I still think it's too much.

[Anonymous]

Mine didn't take the Jan test, but I've noticed that there is considerable variability in the tests, so sometimes you can get quite a few answers wrong and still score in the 99th percentile, i.e. the test was hard. Other times you can get just one answer wrong and not score in the 99th percentile, i.e. the test was easy and a high percentage of the kids did well.

Since my kids invariably get at least a problem or two wrong due to lack of attention to detail, they tend to get higher scores when the test is hard. As a result, when they say the test was easy, I expect the scores to be lower.


Maybe you child is different, in which case you might want to consider signing your dc up for the "flex" test. You can take it any time, so you could still get the scores in by most schools deadlines.

You can always sign up for the flex test and then cancel it if dc does well, although you'll lose the money.

[Anonymous]

I think there is a perception of variability among test takers but only the designers of the test know the genuine variabilty, if such a thing is even measurable. I would think they would be aiming for consistency.

FWIW: DC thought last year's was a breeze but scored miserably. This year, DC thought it was a challenge, and scored very high.

[Anonymous]

How old is your child? I believe the same test is given to middle school students and high school students and the score is based on how other kids in the same age group score on the same test. It is really hard and kids are not expected to answer all of the questions. Your DS probably did better than he thinks. I tried the sample tests myself and some of them were quite difficult.

[Anonymous]

No kidding. I could not do many of the math problems in the Kaplan test book. I'd forgotten a lot of terminology (what the heck IS a reciprocal fraction?) and the logic ones were scary. That's why I was surprised DC did as well as he did. I guess I'm not smarter than a 5th grader.

[Anonymous]

There is variability in the sense that for some tests more kids get more questions wrong than other tests. You don't need to have designed the test to see this, because you get a report that tells you both how many questions your child got wrong and/or omitted and his or her percentile ranking.

If your child gets three questions wrong and scores at the 75th percentile on the math subtest in October, and then the child also gets three wrong on the math subtest in December but scores at the 99th percentile, then what happened is that the tests varied in difficulty.

[Anonymous]

The test itself not the only variable. The pool of test-takers might have shifted.

[Anonymous]

True.