SSAT Writing Sample: Prompts, Examples, and Tips for Every Level

The Kite and Pickles

It was so windy at the park that my hat blew off two times before we even got to the field. Pickles and I brought my new red kite. It has a dragon face on it and my grandpa got it for my birthday. It’s the best present I got.

I ran super fast and the kite went up, up, up! Pickles barked the whole time because he thinks kites are birds. Then WHOOSH. A giant wind came and the string got ripped right out of my hands.

The kite got stuck at the very top of the biggest tree in the whole park. I yelled “Come back!” but kites don’t listen. Pickles barked at the tree like it was the tree’s fault.

There was a ladder on the grass. I tried to pick it up but it was heavier than my little brother, and he is pretty heavy. So I asked Mr. Lopez for help. He is the park guy with the golf cart. He climbed up and shook the branch really hard and the kite came floating down like a leaf.

I said thank you five times. Pickles licked Mr. Lopez right on the nose, which was kind of gross, but he laughed. Next time I am holding on with two hands. Maybe I will tie the string to my wrist.

Four Words

The note on my locker was only four words long: MEET ME AT LUNCH. No name. Just those words in purple marker on a torn piece of notebook paper.

I read it about ten times during first period instead of listening to Mrs. Hadley explain ratios. Who would write that? My best friend Theo would just text me. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe somebody wanted to tell me something bad. By third period I was positive I was in trouble. For what, I had no idea. The worst thing I’d done all month was forget my gym clothes. Twice.

At lunch I took the longest possible route to the cafeteria and stood in the doorway like a spy. Everyone looked normal. Then I saw a kid named Arjun waving at me from the table by the windows. Arjun was new. He moved here from Ohio in October, and I don’t think I had ever said more than “hey” to him.

“You got my note,” he said, like that was obvious.

Here’s the thing. Arjun sits behind me in science, and apparently he’d been watching me draw comics in my notebook margins instead of labeling cell parts. He draws too. The district art contest has a graphic novel category, but it’s partners only, and he didn’t know anybody else who drew. Asking me face to face felt too awkward, he said, so he went with a mystery note. Somehow that was the less awkward option to him.

We spent the whole lunch period planning a story about a hamster who becomes mayor of a small town. Arjun was better at drawing faces. I was better at backgrounds and jokes. By the time the bell rang we had six pages of sketches and a name for the hamster (Mayor Whiskerton).

We didn’t win the contest. We got third place, which came with a certificate and a gift card to the bookstore. But I got something better than first place out of it. Now Arjun sits with Theo and me every day, and we are already working on Mayor Whiskerton 2.

I still have the note. It’s taped inside my locker door.

Biscuit Week

Over winter break I got to take home Biscuit, our class guinea pig. Ms. Ferraro only lets one kid do it each break, and you have to get a permission slip signed and take home a list of rules, which I taped to our fridge. Rule number one was in red: ALWAYS LATCH THE CAGE.

The first three days went great. Biscuit ate his pellets and his lettuce and made this squeaky wheeking noise every time he heard the fridge open, so I guess he figured out that’s where the lettuce lives. My little sister wanted to hold him like nine hundred times. I let her twice.

On day four I cleaned his cage. I did everything right, new bedding, fresh water, the whole thing. Then my friend Dev called about a video game and I ran to get the phone. When I came back, the cage door was open about two inches and Biscuit was gone.

I have never felt my stomach drop like that. I kept picturing walking into class in January and saying I lost him. We looked under the couch, in the closets, behind the TV. My dad finally heard scratching in the laundry room. Biscuit was wedged behind the dryer, covered in dust and chewing on an old sock like nothing happened.

It took us forty minutes and a broom handle to get him out. After that I latched the cage, then checked it, then checked it again, every single time. My sister started calling me the Cage Police.

When I gave Biscuit back, I told Ms. Ferraro the whole story. I figured she’d be mad. She just said the kids who admit their mistakes are the ones she trusts the most, and she asked if I wanted him again over spring break. I said yes. I’m keeping the rule sheet, though.

The Back Booth at Sal’s

Most people would expect me to pick somewhere peaceful, like a beach or my bedroom. The place where I feel most like myself is the back booth at Sal’s Diner, which is loud, smells like coffee and bacon grease, and has a ripped red vinyl seat that pinches the back of your legs if you wear shorts.

My grandfather started taking me there on Saturday mornings when I was seven. He ordered the same thing every time, two eggs over easy and rye toast, and I ordered chocolate chip pancakes and ate about half of them. Back then I mostly went for the pancakes. I didn’t realize until later that I was learning how to talk to people.

My grandfather knows everyone at Sal’s. He knows that the waitress, Denise, has a son in the Navy, and that the man at the counter with the crossword is a retired bus driver named Phil who argues about baseball. Every week my grandfather would ask them real questions and actually wait for the answers. When I was little I just listened. Around sixth grade I started asking my own questions, and I found out that Phil once drove a bus route through three states in one day, and that Denise wants to open her own bakery someday.

At school I am usually the quiet one in group projects. I’m not shy exactly, but I like to think before I talk, and by the time I figure out what to say the conversation has moved on. At Sal’s nobody is in a rush. The conversations go slowly enough that I can catch up. I’ve realized I am actually good at listening and asking follow-up questions, which is something I didn’t know about myself until I practiced it in a diner booth over pancakes.

My grandfather can’t drive anymore, so now my mom drops us off and picks us up. We still sit in the same booth. Last month Denise told me she finally signed a lease for her bakery, and she wanted me to be one of the first people to know. I felt proud, like I had been part of it in some small way.

Some people feel like themselves when they are alone. I feel most like myself when I am listening to someone else’s story, and the back booth at Sal’s is where I figured that out.

Lock the Phones, Not the Students

Starting in September, my school takes our phones away at 7:50 every morning. Well, technically we keep them, but they get locked inside a magnetic pouch that only opens at a station by the front door. You would’ve thought the first day was a funeral. Three months later, I think the rule is mostly right, but schools should leave room for one exception.

The biggest reason I support the ban is what happened at lunch. Last year my lunch table was eight people staring at eight screens. We would show each other videos, but we weren’t really talking. Now we actually talk. In October we spent an entire lunch period arguing about whether a hot dog is a sandwich, and it was the most I laughed all week. That sounds small, but for a lot of kids lunch is the only time to be social during the day, and phones were taking it over.

The second reason is focus in class. Under the old rule, phones were supposed to stay in backpacks, but backpacks buzz. Mr. Brandt, who teaches my English class, told us he used to lose ten minutes a day to saying “phone away, please.” Now he doesn’t have to, and we get through more of the lesson. My math grade went up this quarter, and I think part of that is that I’m not checking group chats during practice problems.

People who are against the ban usually bring up emergencies. Parents want to be able to reach their kids, and that’s a fair worry. But the front office has phones, and so do teachers. In a real emergency, a hundred kids all calling their parents at once would probably make things more confusing, not less.

My one exception is students who need their phones for medical apps, like my friend who checks her blood sugar with one. Schools should let students like her keep their phones with a note from a doctor, and most schools with bans already do this.

Overall, the phone ban has made my school a better place to learn and to just be a person. It wasn’t fun at first, and I still miss my phone sometimes between classes. But I would rather sit at a table full of people arguing about hot dogs than a table full of people scrolling.