Scott Duddy is the Director of Admissions & Enrollment Management at Dexter Southfield School in Brookline, Massachusetts, and brings with him 14 years of professional experience in the world of independent schools. He has served as a secondary school counselor at The Fessenden School and as Director of Financial Aid at Westminster School.
In this conversation with Test Innovators’ CEO, Edan Shahar, Scott talks about the admissions process from two perspectives: that of an educator helping students find their next school, and that of an admissions director deciding which applicants will be the best fit.
The SSAT’s analogies are one of the very hardest parts of the test, especially for first-time test takers. To perform well on the analogies section, students not only must be adept at finding relationships between concepts, but also must have a solid mastery of above-grade-level vocabulary.
The Test Innovators platform gathers...
You may know already that Test Innovators provides online tutoring, but perhaps you’re not convinced yet that online tutoring is the most effective way to help students prepare. To help persuade you, we’ve compiled a list of the unique benefits of online tutoring:
The first section of the SSAT is a timed writing sample.
The prompts vary by test level, with Upper and Middle level students choosing between two differing prompts, and Elementary level students being asked to write a story based on a visual prompt. Upper and Middle level... Read More
We are pleased to introduce Ryan, one of our 2020 scholars. Ryan’s perseverance and dedication allowed him to increase his SSAT score by 51 percentile points, scoring in the 81st percentile overall.
Parents often ask us which ISEE section is the most important to a competitive application. It’s also a question we like to discuss with our internal team and with our network of tutors and school administrators. And as with everything else, we’ve analyzed our data to find the answer to...
Families across the nation have become familiar with mandatory state achievement tests.
While some private school students remain fairly inexperienced with standardized testing, the majority of students, and certainly those in public schools, are all too acquainted with various achievement test acronyms.
A Note from Test Innovators’ CEO, Edan Shahar
To date, students have answered over 20 million questions on the Test Innovators platform. Now, we are diving into this data to understand how students learn and to help them achieve their academic and test-taking goals.
After exploring how our students improve, we investigated...
Since 2012, Test Innovators has helped more than 65,000 students prepare for the SSAT and the ISEE, the admissions tests required for applications to the most competitive independent schools in the country. Every year we review our data from thousands of test-takers to find out the schools that students are...
The first thing to know for the Middle or Upper level SSAT is when to guess. You need to understand each question well enough to be able to cross off at least one answer choice. Otherwise, omit the question as there is a ¼ point guessing penalty.
Summer break offers a unique opportunity for students to get ahead on ISEE and SSAT prep without the pressure of a busy school schedule. With more time and flexibility, students can build confidence, strengthen core skills, and reduce stress ahead of admissions season.
