You’ve done it! You’ve made it through 5 sections, 150 questions, one essay, and over two and a half hours of SSAT testing. You may feel ready to go home and take a well-deserved nap (or run around after sitting for so long), but before you breathe a deep sigh of relief, there’s one final section to complete.
The Experimental Section is the shortest section of the SSAT–only 15 minutes long with 16 questions total. Unlike the other SSAT sections, this one includes a mix of question types: six verbal, five reading, and five quantitative. While you should still answer every question and try your best, don’t let this section stress you out: it is not scored and will not be sent to schools.
So, if it’s not scored, why does the Experimental Section exist? Writing a test like the SSAT is complex, and test writers use this final section to try out new questions. The developers evaluate the results to determine whether each question is appropriate, fair, and reliable enough to appear on future versions of the test.
Once you finish these last 15 minutes, you can feel proud of both conquering a long and challenging exam and also contributing to the future of the SSAT.
Originally published on November 6, 2018. Updated on May 2, 2025.
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For the first section of the SSAT, you will have 25 minutes to produce a sample of your best writing. For the writing sample, you will choose from two prompts: one is a creative prompt in the form of a partial sentence.
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