It’s that time of year: The scores for the School Day SAT will be available on April 3rd for students who submitted their answers by March 14th. These rolling releases will continue through May 15th. (If, however, your student took the SAT during the weekend testing on March 8th, their scores have already been released.)
Waiting for their scores can be nerve-racking for students (and parents), and interpreting those scores isn’t always straightforward. Below is a quick guide on how to review your student’s SAT score.
How the SAT Is Organized
The digital SAT, or dSAT, is made up of the same two sections as the traditional SAT—the Reading & Writing section and the Math section. Both sections are divided into equally timed modules. The first module for both sections comprises a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. One of the most significant differences between the paper SAT and dSAT is the dSAT’s use of multistage adaptive testing. Depending on how well a student does on the first module, the second module for each section will be easier or harder. This responsive feature allows the SAT to assess the academic strengths of each student, which are captured on the SAT Score Report.
How the SAT Is Scored
Because the dSAT is adaptive, it doesn’t just score a test based on whether questions were answered correctly. It also factors in the difficulty level of the question, how the question differentiates students with different levels of content knowledge and the likelihood that the student is guessing. All this to say, the reported total score is still the sum of the 2 section scores. Each section is scored from 200 to 800, so a student’s total score falls somewhere between 400 and 1600. The SAT’s benchmarks for college and career readiness are 480 for Reading & Writing and 530 for Math. Ultimately, though, the meaning of your student’s total SAT score is directly tied to which universities they hope to attend. The average total score of a student applying to Texas A&M is 1260. If your student is dead set on making it to Yale, they will need a total score closer to 1540.
The Sections on an SAT Score Report
Your student will be able to access a downloadable PDF from studentscores.collegeboard.org once their score is released. The document has a significant amount of information on it, but the total score is located in the top left and the section scores are located directly below.
While your student will likely focus on the total score and section scores, it’s important to note that there is a lot of other useful information on the document. Next to each score is its percentile, and directly below it is a score range, which estimates how a student might do if they took the test repeatedly, as well as the 3-year average score of 12th-grade test takers at their school
Your student’s SAT Score Report will also include a knowledge and skills section, which assesses their understanding of the specific content areas found in the Math section and Reading & Writing section. This section is especially useful for students who are considering testing again as it can help them identify what concepts they might want to review or where they could use a test taking strategy.
A Word on Percentiles
While every student would probably be pretty stoked to land in the 95th percentile of the SAT, the reality is that the exam (like all standardized tests) is literally designed to make sure that isn’t possible. The adaptive testing used by the dSAT serves another function on top of dynamically assessing a student’s academic strengths: It helps the College Board, the organization that creates and administers the test, create a bell curve among test takers. That means your student’s total score could almost always use additional context, and undergraduate admissions offices are well aware of that fact. The College Board also knows their test needs more context, which is why your student can see a comparison of their score at the school, district, state, and national level on their student portal. Simply put, a score in the 87th percentile is not the equivalent of a B+ on the exam—it’s a score that makes you competitive at Texas A&M.
If your student is planning on testing again or is getting ready to take the SAT for the first time, consider signing them up for 1-on-1 standardized test prep at The Enrichery. We specialize in dSAT prep, and students who complete our 4-month program see an average increase of 150 to 200 points on their total score. Schedule that first session soon to get your student prepared for the SAT on August 23rd.
