On Episode 255 of The Prepped and Polished Podcast, Aaron of Prepped and Polished gives you an idea of when to start preparing for the SSAT and ISEE Exams based on your or your student’s unique timelines.
Today, we’re going to be talking about when to start preparing for the SSAT and ISEE exams. Now, these exams are used for students who are planning to apply to private or independent schools and need to have a test to kind of accompany the application process for the school. Now, typically, the SSAT and ISEE exams are held in the fall and winter timeframe, please be sure to check out another podcast episode where we kind of go into a deep dive of both the SSAT and ISEE exams.
But because most students take the test in the fall and winter, it’s due to the fact that the applications are going to be due for schools in the beginning of January, sometimes the second week in January, though some schools might accept applications in February. Now, based on that, we really come down to three different timeframes that a student would be preparing for the test, and we’re going to try and rank and go through each of them to consider when we should start preparing for the SSAT or ISEE exams.
A year before
Now the first is the ideal, a year before the student plans to apply. We figure out, okay, we have a whole year in front of us, we want to get in a practice test to set up an idea of what the students’ baseline is and then work from there. Now, typically, this gives us the most amount of time to work on content and strategies that student may have not covered yet in school or needs specific attention to based off of that score.
The second scenario is maybe a student decides that at the end of a school year before the fall that he or she wants to apply for private schools. If that is the case, again, we would like to get in at the end of the school year a practice test to set up a baseline and then utilize the summer for more of an accelerated course to go through the material and content.
Fall and winter test dates
Again, if we are looking at fall and winter test dates, depending on which test, that would at least give us several months worth of prep to go through the material and accelerate through it in order to prepare for the SSAT in either October and November or for the ISEE in November, A.K.A. the falls testing season, and then potentially a second test in the winter season. Now, the third scenario is the not-ideal scenario, but we can still make it work is that a student comes to us at the end of summer deciding to take the test and we just have the fall in front of us to prepare for it. Now, this obviously limits us with the amount of time we have before the test, but we can still work with the student on the material.
Ideally, though, we want to get a student in the bare minimum the summer before they start taking it. So, if they take it, for example, this fall, we would like to start in end of June or mid-end of June with a practice test and then begin from there preparing the student, going through material content, building a vocabulary, highlighting certain math concepts that maybe they haven’t learned yet, and/or reading strategies and active reading approaches, Just that in that way they can be fully comprehensive and prepared for the test come the fall.
Reach out to us
Now, these are ideal scenarios, but what I would recommend is that even if your student has not yet decided if he or she wants to apply for a private school but is considering it, do reach out to us at Prepped and Polished, we’d be happy to discuss options, timelines, and material and setting up a baseline so that we can kind of determine what is your child’s ability right now? What are they aiming for? What schools are they looking into? And just help out with that timeline and time frame to really prepare the student as best as we can for that test. Again, at Prepped and Polished, we want to be able to help each and every student accelerate and succeed in their goals, so please reach out to us and we’d be happy to chat and set up a consultation to figure that out together.
What was your biggest takeaway from this podcast about When to Start Preparing for the SSAT and ISEE Exams? Do you have any questions for Aaron and Alexis Avila?
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