You’ve done it! You’ve made it through 5 sections, 150 questions, one essay, and over 2 and a half hours of testing. You may be 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.
The experimental section is the shortest section of the test: only 15 minutes and 16 questions total. Unlike the other SSAT sections, the experimental section has a mix of question types: six verbal, five reading, and five quantitative. While you want to answer every question and try your hardest, don’t let the experimental section stress or overwhelm you: it is neither scored nor sent to schools.
So, if it’s not scored, why does this section exist? Writing a test like the SSAT can be difficult, and test writers use this last section to try out new questions. Test writers will evaluate the results of each question to determine if it is appropriate and reliable and ultimately if it will appear on the test in future years. Once you’ve finished those last 15 minutes, you can be proud of both conquering a long and difficult test and playing a role in shaping the test for years to come.
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.
Every student is different, and every student’s test prep needs are different too. Test Innovators’ online platform provides every student with a Personalized Prep Plan, targeted to an individual’s specific needs. The Prep Plan provides guidance on next steps and auto-generates specific recommendations for practice to complete.
The Prep Plan is one of the best places to see the targeted practice exercises you should be working on. You can access the Prep Plan by clicking on the tab on your Dashboard. Here are some insights into using the Prep Plan to help you succeed:
Meet Kate and Brady
Kate’s son, Brady, recently took the Secondary School Admissions Test (SSAT) in hopes of gaining admission to Lakeside School for 6th grade. Brady is a very strong student, but as for many students, the SSAT was a new challenge for him. To make sure he was best...
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...
If your child will be taking the ISEE or SSAT this year, you’re probably busy researching the best way to help them prepare. There is a lot of information out there and it can be very overwhelming, so we want to help by offering our top 5 tips for parents....
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.
Test Innovators' education team recently ran webinars that answered our most frequently asked questions about these tests. If you missed the webinars, check out the recordings.
