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.
Due to the recent coronavirus outbreak, The Enrollment Management Association (EMA), makers of the SSAT, is taking preventative steps to ensure the safety of students, test center administrators and proctors, members, and employees. They are closing test centers in impacted areas and requiring a completed Travel Declaration from anyone entering...
The SSAT at Home is the same test as the traditional SSAT— the only difference is that the test is administered on the computer rather than on paper. However, because the experience of taking a test at home on the computer is different from taking a test in person...
Yesterday Test Innovators' Director of Education Brenna O'Neill revealed the strategies and secrets she and her team of highly experienced tutors have developed over years of preparing students for the SSAT. You can view the recording below:
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...
At-home testing for admissions exams makes it convenient for students to take these important tests. At-home tests are administered online via a securely monitored remote proctoring program. The structure and content of the at-home version is the same as the traditional paper test, but the means by which you take...
In a study at Tufts University, 120 student participants learned a series of 30 words and images. They studied either by taking practice tests or by using the traditional study method of reading over the material to memorize it. They were then asked to recall what they had learned in...
Over the past six years, Test Innovators has helped more than 100,000 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 most...
What is a good score on the SSAT? That's a question we get asked a lot here at Test Innovators. Maybe you just got your score report back, or perhaps you've just taken a practice test and wonder whether or not your scores are acceptable.
Time management is one of the keys to success on the ISEE/SSAT. Attempting timed sections can be less daunting with our simple time management strategy: