<p>Which scores are added into the school’s average? Which set of scores are taken into account for admissions? If the second scores are higher, do they use those scores? Thanks!</p>
<p>Just so we’re on the same page…I’m assuming that you directed – and paid for – SSAT to send more than one set of scores to a particular school. I’m asking because some people are under the impression that a school sees all the scores you’ve received for all the tests you’ve sat for.</p>
<p>The answer to your first question is easy. The school’s average score as reported by the school to others will utilize the best numbers they can find. But there’s another set of numbers that most people don’t know about and those are the numbers that SSAT reports to the school that indicates where a set of scores ranks among all the other scores reported to the school for the previous admission year. Each report sent to the school is ranked separately and it’s my understanding that the highest of these (for each component) will be used when creating the ranking benchmark for the succeeding year. In other words, when SSAT creates its database of scores for all the students who forwarded scores to Exover Academy this year and you sent 2 or more score reports to Exover, the SSAT database will use the best verbal score, the best quantitative score, the best reading score and the best total score that you received from among your several reports sent to that school. (Which, I assume is the answer you hope to hear for your second question…but I’m still answering the first question.)</p>
<p>As for your second question, it all depends on the school…and probably the range of scores. I’m just guessing, but I doubt that any school uses an average of the scores you send. What a time killer that would be! Plus it would create an all new “imaginary” score that can’t be applied to the very useful benchmarked, shared context reports that SSAT delivers with each actual set of scores it delivers to the schools. </p>
<p>That still leaves a number of options for schools regarding your second and third questions. </p>
<p>They could take the highest score for each component – like the SSAT will do to create next year’s shared context data for that school – but creating that hybrid score set would require some effort to cut and paste. Plus, if the scores are examined on-line there would be some back-and-forth navigating required. I’d bet that some schools do that…but it’s not likely to be the approach followed by most schools.</p>
<p>Another option for schools is to take the set of scores with the lowest total score. Of course that’s just as arbitrary as looking at the highest set of scores. So, for those schools that choose one set of scores by looking to the total score, I would think schools would prefer to look at the score report with the highest total score. (Which covers your third question.) But, remember, I’m speculating and there is DEFINITELY no universal answer to your questions.</p>
<p>That brings us to whether they look at the most recent set of scores. I suspect that that’s what many schools do, simply to be efficient. Plus, how many people forward score reports with lower scores? (Some January retakers, do so unintentionally and others might do so intentionally because a single component is improved significantly.) Generally, though, it makes sense to focus on the most recent set of scores. So, now addressing your third question, means that if the second scores are higher those would be the scores they’d look at. </p>
<p>But what if your second scores are lower? Will a school that looks to the most recent scores make the effort to look at older score reports to see if there are higher scores…and then look to those higher scores instead? Probably and maybe, in that order.</p>
<p>If you’ve sent more than one set of scores, a school that has a policy of looking at the highest set of scores (whether by using a hybrid score report or looking to the score report with the highest total score) has to look at all the scores anyway. But will a school that looks to the most recent scores bother to look deeper into the file? I think so. It wouldn’t make sense for them to ignore that data that’s right at their fingertips. But I think those scores only make a difference (for this set of schools) if they are materially different, for better or worse. And just how these schools factor or weigh materially different scores is an equally complex and far more speculative journey.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, my short answer is this: if you wish to compare with some precision your multiple score reports to a particular school’s total SSAT %ile average from last year…I can’t help you! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Thanks 
!!</p>