SSAT Analogy Practice Questions

Now that you’ve learned some strategies for the analogy section of the SSAT, take a look at some techniques for guessing and try your hand at some practice questions!

Guessing


What if you reach the point where you can’t figure out the bridge for the stem words, you can’t rule out wrong answer choices, and you want to cry? Well, first of all, don’t cry. It’s a waste of time and it makes it difficult to read the questions. You have a few options.
  • Technique 1: Make an Educated Guess

    You know the six classic bridges. You know they show up often on Analogy questions. So even if you don’t know the exact definition of one (or both!) words, you could make an educated guess about the bridge. For example, say you saw this stem:
    Word is to philologist as…
    What might the bridge be? Well, a philologist sounds like a type of person (since it ends in –ologist), and a word is a thing, so maybe a philologist does something with words. Philologist is a tricky word, but you could make a great guess by saying that a philologist studies words, which is exactly right!

  • Technique 2: Remember the Context

    Sometimes a word sounds familiar, but you can’t remember why. If that happens, try to think of a place where you may have heard it before. Putting words into context makes it easier to determine their meaning. For example:
    Vote is to suffrage as…
    What does suffrage mean? Have you heard of the suffrage movement? Or the suffragists? Think about the word suffrage in the context of voting. What could the words have to do with each other? Well, suffrage is the right to vote, and the movement to give women the right to vote at the beginning of the 20th century was commonly known as the Suffrage Movement. Just looking at the word suffrage in isolation might have left you scratching your head, but putting it in context with the concept of voting could get you back on track and help you home in on the right answer.

  • Technique 3: Use Word Charge

    Some words give you the feeling that they’re either positive or negative. Use this sense to help you figure out the bridge between words in the stem when you don’t actually know what one of them means—or both!
    Decide whether the following words are positive or negative:
    1. Cruel (+, –) is to clemency (+, –) as
    2. Boorish (+, –) is to polite (+, –) as
    3. Animated (+, –) is to ecstatic (+, –) as
    4. Annoyed (+, –) is to enraged (+, –) as
    So how does Word Charge help you find the right answer? Once you determine the charge of the words in the stem pair, you can look for words in the answer choices that have the same charge relationship. When both words in the stem are either positive or negative, both words in the correct answer choice will have the same charge, too, though it may be the opposite charge from the words in the stem. If one stem word is positive and the other is negative, chances are that the right answer will have the same relationship.
    So what charge does each word above have?
    1. (–, +)
    2. (–, +)
    3. (+, +)
    4. (–, –)


Now that you have these techniques down, try out some practice questions!

Question 1
Perimeter is to square as
(A) chord is to cylinder
(B) side is to polygon
(C) degree is to angle
(D) height is to pyramid
(E) circumference is to circle


E


Question 2
Matriarch is to patriarch as
(A) daughter is to father
(B) girl is to boy
(C) right is to wrong
(D) male is to female
(E) clan is to family


B


Question 3
Canine is to wolf as feline is to
(A) panther
(B) pig
(C) monkey
(D) rat
(E) vulture


A


Question 4
Wheat is to apple as
(A) barley is to ale
(B) leaf is to root
(C) coarse is to smooth
(D) acorn is to sapling
(E) flour is to cider


E


Question 5
Bison is to plain as cougar is to
(A) desert
(B) valley
(C) crest
(D) mountain
(E) bay


D


Need some help prepping for the SSAT? Check out Kaplan’s study resources!