School and College Ability (SCAT) Test Prep

Overview

The School and College Ability Test (SCAT Test) is a standard test that is designed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) to identify gifted children in the second to twelfth grades. The test is considered an above grade level exam that measures both verbal and mathematical reasoning abilities.

The test is timed and consists of two parts, verbal and math sections.  All questions are multiple choice. CTY has used the SCAT since 1985 to identify talented youth. The SCAT test was computerized and made available at Prometric test centers in 1996.

Three Levels of the SCAT

• Elementary SCAT designed for grade 4-5 students: Taken by grade 2-3 students.
• Intermediate SCAT designed for grade 6-8 students: Taken by grade 4-5 students.
• Advanced SCAT designed for grades 9-12 students: Taken by students in grades six and above.

There are two sections in the test, Quantitative and Verbal. The quantitative section tests mathematical skills, while the verbal section tests a candidate’s verbal reasoning using analogies.

The two sections of the test, verbal and quantitative sections, have 55 questions each. For each, 50 questions are graded, while 5 are experimental and do not count in the final grade or score.

The time allocated to each section is 22 minutes, with a 10-minute break between the two sections. The test does not penalize wrong answers; so if all else fails guessing is a good strategy.

Note that each question must be answered before one can move to the next question. There is also an option to review and change answers before submitting the exam if time allows.

This section is designed to measure a candidate’s understanding of words and their ability to reason verbally. These are multiple-choice questions analogies requiring a candidate to make a choice of the best pair of words for completing the analogy. In order to perform well in this section, a child must have mastery of strong vocabulary, information/knowledge, and verbal reasoning abilities.

This section measures the candidate’s ability to understand foundational math operations. Just like verbal questions, quantitative questions are multiple choices consisting of mathematical comparisons. The child is required to compare two quantities and determine which one is greater than the other. The questions do not require computation since they are only intended to test a child’s mathematical reasoning. To perform well, the child needs to have a strong understanding of mathematical facts, reasoning, number operations, and calculations.

After the test, parents receive information showing the score compared to other students in the higher grades. The SCAT is scored by combining both scaled and raw scoring system. The scoring is specific to sections.

The three steps of calculating CTY SCAT scores are:

• Raw score: which is calculated by tallying the number of correct answers out of 50.
• Scaled score: the raw score calculated in the first step is converted into a scaled score allowing administrators to compare scores. These scores range from 400 to 514.
• SCAT Percentiles: this is used to compare a candidate’s scores are compared to the norms of performance in a higher grade.

A candidate can view his/her results on the JHU MyCTY page 5 days after taking the test. Furthermore, one will receive the results of the test by mail from CTY three weeks from the test date.

Before a student register and book a test date, they are required to register with CTY to claim their eligibility number. After receiving the eligibility number, one can book their SCAT test at the nearest Prometric test center by logging into their MyCTY account online. Those wishing to do the test at home can also specify while registering. There are designated centers for disabled children to take their tests. Disabled candidates are be given a 90-minute slot within which the child must complete the test.