What are the SSAT and ISEE?
The Secondary School Admission Test, or SSAT, is a standardized test often required for admission to private high schools in the United States and Canada. It measures students’ math, language, and reading comprehension skills, and examines their logical thinking and development potential.
The Independent School Entrance Exam, or ISEE, is administered by the ISEE Operations Office and the Educational Records Bureau (ERB) and is designed to test students’ verbal and mathematical comprehension and reasoning skills.
ISEE scores are recognized by more than 1,200 prestigious private schools worldwide and by many public schools in the US. Some schools in the Boston Public Schools system in Massachusetts, for example, use ISEE scores as the sole criterion for student admission.
Although the ISEE is currently less well known in China than the SSAT, the two are equally popular in the United States.
Strategies to Prepare for the SSAT and ISEE
Improve Vocabulary
A solid vocabulary is always the most basic requirement in a language proficiency test. It’s not enough to memorize words, though; you need to use them flexibly on top of learning their meanings. This will help you get the analogy and synonym types of questions, which examine whether students can use language appropriately and in the right context.
Understand How Writers Make Arguments
To master the reading comprehension questions, you need to find the relationship between the author’s arguments. The common methods of argumentation used by authors are: argument by example, argument by comparison, argument by cause and effect, and argument with data citations. The connections and transitions between these claims are where the test questions tend to come from, and so students should pay more attention to them.
Gain Familiarity with Common Question Types
Questions about synonyms and analogies will pop up when the text is examining your vocabulary. You’ll also find a few similar reading questions that are concerned with: main ideas, important details, inferences, and the author’s point of view and attitude. Each type of question requires a different kind of thinking from the student, and so you’ll have to practice various types of analytical thinking in order to find the correct answer.
Read As Much As You Can
You should pay special attention to books and films about American society, culture, and history. This will help you master many of the techniques and words used in writing stories, and you’ll be able to use them more naturally in the writing process. When describing characters and narrating the plot, you should learn to use more rhetorical techniques, like similes, metaphors, and symbolism, which will make the essay more lively and interesting.
Balance Speed and Correctness
No matter what kind of test you take, time constraints are a challenge, and one that must be faced head-on. As such, finding a way to balance speed and correctness is a priority. Time yourself in practice and work on your ability to get the correct answer in a short time. Don’t waste too much time on questions you haven’t seen or can’t do; instead, finish the questions you know you can answer, and then go back and solve the ones you didn’t get to before.
