SSAT写作真题解析

Writing Sample

Questions: 1 (essay response)

Time: 25 minutes

What is measured? Your essay will be used by admission officers to assess your writing skills. The exercise is not scored by SSAT, but a copy of your essay is forwarded to each school you request as a score recipient.

Directions: Read the following topic carefully. Take a few minutes to think about the topic and organize your thoughts before you begin writing. Use the scratch paper and pen provided. Be sure that your handwriting is legible and that you stay within the lines and margins.

Sample Topic: It is better to be safe than sorry.

Assignment: Do you agree or disagree with the topic statement?

Support your position with one or two specific examples from personal experience, the experience of others, current events, history, or literature.

Multiple-choice Test

Each question is followed by five answer choices. After you have selected your answer, find the row on the answer sheet numbered the same as the question, and fill in the circle with the same letter as your answer. Each question has only one correct answer.

Reading Comprehension

Questions: 40 (multiple-choice), based on 6-7 reading passages

Time: 40 minutes

What is measured? Your ability to read quickly and to understand what you read.

Directions: Read the passage carefully and then answer the questions (1-3) about it. For each question, decide on the basis of the passage which one of the choices best answers the question.

We had had a consuming desire to see a pony rider, but somehow or other all that passed us streaked by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom was gone.

But now the driver exclaims, "Here he comes!" Every neck is stretched and every eye strained.

Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky. Soon it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, sweeping nearer and nearer, and the flutter of hoofs comes faintly to the ear. Another instant a whoop and hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!

1. At the driver's call, the people became more

A. disappointed

B. eager

C. frightened

D. puzzled

E. hysterical

2. The people waiting to see the pony rider were most probably

A. at a hotel

B. on a grandstand

C. on a stagecoach

D. at a farm

E. in a theater

3. The land where the people were watching was

A.flat and treeless

B. hilly and rocky

C. desert-like

D. farmland

E. cut by deep crevasses

Quantitative (MATH)

Questions: 50 (multiple-choice), in two sections

Time: 30 minutes per section (60 minutes total)

What is measured? Your knowledge of algebra and quantitative concepts.

Directions: Following each problem in this section, there are five suggested answers. Work each problem in your head or in the space provided (there will be space for scratchwork in your test booklet). Then look at the five suggested answers and decide which is best.