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Community Products Products Overview An overview of our products The SSAT Secondary School Admission Test SSAT at Home At-home administration of The SSAT The Character Skills Better understand your applicants Student Prospect Lists Discover your prospective students SAO The Standard Application Online The Interpretive Guide for The Character Skills New training tool to assist schools with understanding student results Events Contact COVID-19 Join Member Login Home Contact Login Menu About Who We Are Board of Trustees Our Team Technical Advisory Panel Work With us Strategic Partners Membership Become a Member Enrollment Toolkit Blog Podcast Member Access Portal Events Learning Center Community Products Products Overview The SSAT SSAT at Home The Character Skills Student Prospects List The Standard Application Online Membership Join Login The Character Skills Better understand your applicants for a more holistic admissions process. Download Datasheet See It in Action Families want schools to have a more complete picture of their student during the admissions process. Enrollment professionals want a more consistent way to understand the whole applicant. The Character Skills is the answer to the question: How do we better measure students' essential character skills, improve independent school admissions practices, and support the current strengths and emerging skills of all students? Learn More Watch Video Character matters — to students, families, and independent schools. What is The Character Skills ? It’s an innovative online tool that gives EMA members a standardized way to assess seven essential character skills of students seeking entrance to grades 6–12: Intellectual Intellectual Engagement Highlights the student's preference toward willingness and enjoyment of pursuing learning opportunities, regardless of how much difficulty they might experience. Open-mindedness Highlights the student's preference toward a willingness to try new things. Intrapersonal Initiative Highlights the student's preference toward an inclination to work on assignments in a timely manner and emphasizes the point at which a student chooses to start work rather than when the student finishes work. Resilience Highlights the student's preference to adjust to unexpected situations and changing circumstances. Self-control Highlights the student’s preference to monitor and control his/her/their thoughts and actions, and what he/she/they say to others. Interpersonal Social Awareness Highlights the student’s evaluation of the appropriateness of responses to everyday situations. Teamwork Highlights the student's preference to engage in supportive behaviors and emphasizes empathetic qualities that enable productive collaboration with others. “Who you are as a school is who a student should see from the moment they enter the admissions process. At Crossroads, this meant making the student, rather than the school, the focus of our admissions process . The was the ideal tool to help us do that.” Amy Walia-Fazio Director of Secondary Admission Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences See it in action Here’s how it works: The is an online assessment that students can take in a location of their choosing (it is not permitted to be given at schools). The assessment is untimed but takes approximately 25 minutes to complete. Families who register students for the SSAT will automatically receive an email inviting them to consent for their students to take The . Schools that do not use the SSAT can use EMA-provided messaging to instruct applying families to take The . Review Step-by-Step Registration 1 Applicants access The Character Skills online. There are tons of multi-purpose options. Each question on The was written by assessment development specialists and subject matter experts in psychology and education, as well as members from the independent school community. View Sample Questions 2 Students answer two types of questions. There are tons of multi-purpose options. The measures a student’s preferences, attitudes, and beliefs about their character. It does not measure their behavior and is not an achievement test. Member schools using The Character Skills will receive reports from those parents/guardians who select them as report recipients approximately two weeks following completion. Families have the opportunity to review their report before it appears on their selected schools’ Member Access Portal (MAP). Access Results 3 Reports summarize results. There are tons of multi-purpose options. The is meant to complement, not replace, a holistic admissions process that includes information from cognitive tests (such as the SSAT), recommendation letters, interviews, etc. It is not intended to determine if a student should or should not be admitted. Instead, it offers context to help you better understand the whole student. Learn How to Interpret Results 4 Schools use insights to better understand applicants. There are tons of multi-purpose options. The Character Skills : Impact in Action “We feel we have a better idea of who our kids are. The content of our conversations evolved.” Lakeside School (WA) discusses how The Character Skills ensures a more holistic admissions process. Finally, character skills can be measured consistently. The Science Behind The Character Skills The ’s framework stems from extensive research drawn from and conducted by: EMA’s Think Tank on the Future of Assessment Independent School Enrollment Leaders The Educational Testing Service (ETS) Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century (The National Research Council, 2012) To maintain security, a new form of The is developed every academic year. Every item on The undergoes rigorous pilot testing that involves multiple stages. For example, the 2017–2018 form was pilot-tested on 12,000 students prior to its launch. View Summary of Research The better you understand your applicants, the stronger your admissions process. Resources View More Some of the Schools Benefitting From Click the logos below to read success stories. Frequently Asked Questions Overview Logistics Reporting How were the skills selected? After comprehensive deliberation and a series of surveys, focus groups, and meetings, admission directors, heads of schools, and administrators selected the character skills they thought were most important to consider in an admission context. For what age groups is it intended? The Character Skills is intended for students seeing application to independent schools in grades 6 through 12. The was pilot tested with students in grades 5 through 11. The measurement properties of The are stable across these grade levels. How do you know students are answering honestly? The Character Skills is meant to capture a student’s perceptions of themselves in relation to the character skills. They should answer...