High School Placement Test

1. High School Placement Test Miss Cantillon

2. HSPT Overview • Tests math, verbal, reading, and language • Does not measure actual aptitude • Measures skills most critical to a new student • Intended to make school acceptance a more fair experience by expanding the basis approval beyond grades • Study skills philosophy can be applied to all of your studies

3. Testing and Analysis • HSPT is skills-based rather than knowledge-based (not memorizing facts) • Judges your writing, verbal, and mathematical ability (tests likelihood of success in high school) • To some extent, you have gradually obtained many of these skills over the length of your academic career • There are specific strategies you will be required to apply throughout the HSPT

4. HSPT Scoring Scale • No “passing” score, but there is a “cut off” average score • Each school has a different policy for weighing HSPT scores with GPA • Majority of schools weigh HSPT score more heavily than GPA (as much as 70/30) • The test is about 2 hours, 30 minutes long, and includes 298 multiple-choice questions

5. HSPT Scoring Scale • You will earn a raw score for each of the test sections • These raw scores are directly dependent on the number of questions that you have answered correctly • No marks are deducted for questions that have been answered incorrectly by you. Therefore, it would be wise to take a guess if you do not know the answer to a question. • The raw scores are converted to scaled scores that range from 200 to 800

6. Mathematics & Quantitative Skills Test • You will need to: • Understand basic concepts • Reason quantitatively • Solve problems in a quantitative setting • Complete a practice test to identify areas where you excel and areas that require more practice • http://testprepreview.com/hspt_practice.htm • “Critical” math skills are in the areas where you have the most wrong answers in you practice test

7. Mathematics & Quantitative Skills Test • Test is consistent with types of questions it uses:

8. Verbal Test • Analogies - “Analogy” means "word relationships". • Analogies can be formatted as follows: • [word 1] : [word 2] : : [word 3] : [word 4] • In this analogy format, : reads "is to" and : : reads "as" • water : liquid : : ice : solid is read as Water is to liquid as ice is to solid. Practice analogies here: http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/analogies/analogiesx.htm

9. Verbal Test • Strategies for solving analogies: • Using sentences • try to put the words into a sentence that will make it easier to understand the relationship of the words/phrases • Focus on what you know • Do you recognize any prefixes or suffixes? • Do you know any familiar words that have the same root word? • Since there are only 5 choices, eliminate any options that you know are not correct

10. Language Test • Try every choice • plug them into the blank(s) to see what sounds best • Test writers will put in options that may seem “close enough” to the real answer • Read carefully • A prepositional phrase or word can change entire meaning of a sentence • Especially true for transition/hedge words like if, then, therefore, also, sometimes, never, not, and always

11. Language Test • Review: • Apostrophes (contractions vs. possessives) • Comma rules • Problems with references • A referent is a word or phrase that refers to something else (an antecedent); can cause confusion or unintended humor • Problems occur primarily (1) when sentences have more than one possible antecedent; or (2) when the antecedent is only implied • Examples: • The doctors told their patients that they had serious problems. [Who had problems?] • To prevent children from sucking their thumbs, some parents soak them in Tabasco sauce. [Do the parents soak the children or the thumbs?]

12. Reading Comprehension • Flying over the passage 1. “Fly over” the passage to get the gist; focus on the opening and ending sentences in each paragraph 2. Create a mental summary of the passage 3. Read the questions 4. Go back and read the article VERY carefully • Watch out for extraneous information! • If a question asks for the “main idea,” think of how you would explain the article to someone else • Passages will likely be foreign to most test takers and some will be out of context

13. Final Tips • Find your optimal pace • Don’t be a perfectionist • Unless you are in the top .1% strata of test takers, you should not go into the test expecting to get every question right • Watch out for “factually correct, but actually wrong” answers • Get there early on test day!Get a good night’s sleep and eat breakfast!