Before starting the exam preparations, it is important to have a clear idea of how is SAT scored. Also, you have to understand what are good SAT scores. In this article, you will find answers to both questions.
SAT exam is wholly owned and published by the College Board, a private, non-profit organization in the United States.
Since SAT scoring is done as a percentile, a good score is determined by how well you stack up against the rest of the test-takers in that particular year. In this article, we discuss how is SAT scored and provide examples as to what are considered to be good scores.
If you’re planning to prepare for SAT exam at home, read our review of best SAT preparation courses available online.
Read on to find out more.
Section Wise Scoring and Percentiles
For the purpose of the SAT scoring, the exam is divided into two sections- Maths and Evidence-Based Reading and Writing or EBRW (which is the combination of the Reading and Writing sections).
For each of these 2 sections, test-takers are assigned a graded score that ranges between 200 to 800. This brings the total score of the SAT in the range of 400 to 1600. These scores are then translated into percentiles, which essentially indicates the percentage of students with scores lesser than yours. So if your composite percentile score is 70, then you have done better than 70% of that year’s test-takers.
The SAT also has a composite mean or average score and this is deliberately kept around the 1000 marks point out of the total of 1600. For the year 2018, this score was 1068. Find more details on scoring percentiles here.
The section-wise averages are as follows.
Maths Section
The section-wise mean scores are kept around the 500 marks. This varies slightly from year to year. For example, for the 2018 exams, the average for the Maths section was 531 and for 2019 this average is at 528.
Evidence-Based Reading and Writing
Similar to the Maths section, the EBRW is also assigned an average score of around 500. In 2018, this score was 536. While in 2019, this is 531.
For both of these sections, the questions are equally weighted. One raw point is assigned for every correct answer and no deductions are made for wrong answers. For the final SAT scoring, these raw scores are then converted into the scaled scores of 200 to 800 (per section). The exact chart for score conversion varies with the administrations of the test.
What are Good SAT Scores?
With the above SAT scoring method, it is quite evident that a good score will at least mean that you have done better than the average. That is, you have to achieve scores that are higher than the composite mean score. Now, SAT scores usually follow a normal distribution curve. That essentially means that most of the people who take the test score around the average marks only. There is a far lesser number of test-takers who score towards the high or the low end.
This can be exemplified by how the percentile scores are affected by the difference in the scaled scores at various points of the 1600 scale. For example, in 2018 SAT scoring
- A scaled score of 1000 corresponded to a percentile of 39. A 50 point increase in the scaled score (1050) resulted in a percentile ranking of 49. That is a jump of 10 percentile points.
- At the higher end of the scale, a score of 1450 corresponded to a percentile of 97 and a score increase of 50 points to 1500 translated to a percentile of 99- just a 2 point increase.
Needless to say, the higher you can go in the percentile ranking, the better you do in SAT scoring.
Another factor that is crucial to determine whether your scores are good enough is the school that you are interested in. This is because various schools have different cut-off criteria for acceptance into their programs. For example, a score of 1300 can get you into Pennsylvania State University but will not suffice for Cornell. Hence, the college that you aspire to get into plays a major role in deciding what is considered to be a good score for you.
Examples of Good SAT Scoring
Here are a few examples that represent a good result in the SAT scoring scale. These have been given according to colleges to make it easy to understand the differences across various institutions.
1. Princeton University- The average SAT scores are around 1500. Getting a score of 1570 places you
at the 75th percentile position for acceptance into this prestigious college.
2. Ohio State University- The average SAT score for acceptance is 1344. The 75th percentile score is
about 1450.
3. University of California San Diego (UCSD)- The average is 1257 and the 75th percentile is around
1380.
Good luck with the exams!
