Good Sat Score

The SAT Reasoning Test (formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test) is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still administers the exam. The College Board claims the test can assess a student's readiness for college. The test was first introduced in 1901, and its name and scoring have changed several times.

Possible scores range from 600 to 2400, combining test results from three 800-point sections (math, critical reading, and writing). Specifically, the College Board states that use of the SAT in combination with high school grade point average (GPA) provides a better indicator of success in college than high school grades alone, as measured by college freshman GPA. Nearly all colleges accept the test.

For instance, the Triple Nine Society accepts scores of 1450 on tests taken before April 1995, and scores of at least 1520 on tests taken between April 1995 and February 2005.

Each section receives a score on the scale of 200–800. All scores are multiples of 10. Total scores are calculated by adding up scores of the three sections. The questions range from easy, medium, and hard depending on the scoring from the experimental sections. Easier questions typically appear closer to the beginning of the section while harder questions are towards the end in certain sections.

Critical Reading sections normally begin with 5 to 8 sentence completion questions; the remainder of the questions is focused on the reading passages. Certain sections contain passages asking the student to compare two related passages; generally, these consist of shorter reading passages. Unlike in the Mathematics section, where questions go in the order of difficulty, questions in the Critical Reading section go in the order of the passage.

The essay sub score contributes about 30% towards the total writing score, with the multiple choice questions contributing 70%. The multiple choice questions include error identification questions, sentence improvement questions, and paragraph improvement questions. Error identification and sentence improvement questions test the student's knowledge of grammar, presenting an awkward or grammatically incorrect sentence; in the error identification section, the student must locate the word producing the source of the error or indicate that the sentence has no error, while the sentence improvement section requires the student to select an acceptable fix to the awkward sentence.

The essay section, which is always administered as the first section of the test, is 25 minutes long. The scores are summed to produce a final score from 2 to 12 (or 0). Average scores on the reading, math, and writing sections of the SAT test held steady for the second consecutive year, according to a new report by the College Board on the high school class of 2008. Nationwide, a record 1.5 million students took the test. Students from the class of 2008 scored on average 502 on the critical reading section, the same score from a year ago. College Board officials dismiss these comparisons between the two college admissions tests, "It doesn't cause us to re-evaluate the test," said Lawrence Bunin, senior vice president of the College Board. Girls' average score on the reading section was 500, while boys' was 504. Girls continue to lag in math, where boys on average scored 33 points higher.

The College Board report also shows that black and Latino test-takers continue to trail Asian-American and white students. Black students on average scored 430 in critical reading and 426 in math; the averages for Latino students were 455 and 461; and those for white students were 528 and 537. Asian-American students, on average, scored 513 in reading and 581 in math. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.