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On this tutoring tips episode #77 of The Prepped & Polished podcast, Terri Karol of Prepped & Polished addresses the most frequent question that parents and students ask about the SSAT. What is a good enough score!

The secondary school admission test or SSAT, is the required entrance exam at some of the best independent schools in the world. It’s really not an achievement test. Its primary purpose is to yield a reliable, common measure of student’s ability as well as a basis for comparison by which students with diverse experiences may be evaluated.

How is SAT scored?

The most frequent question that parents and students ask about the SSAT or secondary school admission test is what’s considered a good score. In order to answer that, it’s helpful to first understand how the SSAT is scored. Let me give you a little background on that.

The SSAT raw scores for the middle level, which tests grades 5 through 7, and upper level, which tests grades 8 through 11, are determined by subtracting a percentage of wrong answers from the number of right answers. A student receives one point for every correct answer; however, a student loses a quarter point for each incorrect answer. There are no points lost for skipping a question. At the elementary level, for students applying to fourth or fifth grade, there’s no penalty for incorrect answers.

A student’s raw score is then converted to a scaled score for verbal reading and quantitative sections. The scaled score range varies for each level. For the upper level it’s 500 to 800, for the middle level it’s 440 to 710, while for the elementary level it’s 300 to 600. The score report also shows an overall score, which is a combination of the verbal reading and quantitative sections. The student will also receive a percentile score of between 1 and 99 percent. This compares the student’s test scores with those of other test takers of the same grade as well as gender.

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