Digital SAT Score Guide – Ultimate SAT Scoring Guide

Your SAT Score is a fundamental piece of your college application. Every year, nearly 2 million students sit for the SAT exam. To secure your seat in the college you dream of, you must understand the details of SAT scoring, how to improve your SAT scores, what is a good and bad SAT score, what is the average SAT score, and acceptance scores and rates for colleges. We’ve dived into every aspect of SAT scoring in this post.

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📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE SAT Prep resources throughout the article.

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Ethan is one of our thousands of successful SAT students. He perfectly scored 1600 on the SAT, the highest SAT score a student can get! We were with thousands of students, like Ethan, in their Digital SAT Prep journey and that is why created this post to help many others!

💡You might be interested in reading the Digital SAT Math Ultimate Guide post.

How Does the SAT Scoring Work?

Before we dive into the details of SAT scoring, it is better to understand how the SAT scoring works first. There are two sections in the SAT exam, Reading & Writing and Math. Each section has two modules, module 1 and module 2. Reading and Writing modules consist of 27 questions each, and Math modules consist of 22 questions each. We’ve summarized the SAT exam structure in the table below.

Section	Modules	Number of Questions	Total Number of Questions
Reading & Writing	I	27	54
	II	27
Math	I	22	44
	II	22

The most critical aspect of the new Digital SAT is being adaptive. In SAT Module I for each section, you will be asked a broad mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. Then, the difficulty of the SAT Module II will depend on your score in the SAT Module I. This means that the test “adapts” to present questions that are more appropriate to a student’s performance level. The following figure depicts the Digital SAT adaptive testing model.

Free Digital SAT Prep Course

SFBS offers a Free Digital SAT Prep Online Course. The course goes through particular skills and knowledge testing points and improves your problem-solving skills and test-taking strategies.

SAT Score Range

Each SAT section is scored on a 200-800 scale. The minimum score a student can get from a section is 200, and the maximum score is 800. The Total SAT Score of a student is the sum of the Reading & Writing and Math sections scores. We’ve summarized the SAT score range in the following table.

Section	Min Score	Max Score
Reading & Writing	200	800
Math	200	800
TOTAL SAT SCORE	400	1600

What is the Highest SAT Score?

If a student scores 800 on each section; Reading & Writing and Math, he will get the highest SAT score. The maximum SAT score a student can get is 1600. Only less than 1% of all SAT exam test takers achieve this score.

💡We’ve prepared a 7-Step Digital SAT Math Study Guide helping students to prepare their unique SAT Math Study Guide.

What is the Lowest SAT Score?

If a student scores 200 on each section; Reading & Writing and Math, he will get the lowest SAT score. The minimum SAT score a student can get is 400. Note that, even if a student answers a few questions correctly in each section, his score may be still 200. We will explain this further below.

What is the Average SAT Score?

The College Board announced that the average SAT score is 1050. Therefore, if you score over 1050, you will be better than an average SAT exam taker. A score of 1350 would put you in the top 10% of test takers and help make your application competitive at more selective schools. However, for competitive colleges, or Ivy League Colleges, you must get a very high SAT score. We will explain this further below.

📚 San Francisco Business School offers a vast amount of FREE Digital SAT Prep Online materials. See it on the Free Digital SAT Prep Online Library.

SAT Scoring is Not Linear!

You might think that every question has a fixed point in the SAT exam and for each correct answer, you will earn that fixed point. However, SAT exam scoring works adaptive. First of all, even if you answer a few questions in each section, you might not get over 200. This is clearly visible in the SAT Score Chart below. Even if there are up to 6 questions correct in the Reading & Writing and Math sections, the score range is still 200.

Second, each question has a different weight in the SAT exam. College Board categorizes the Digital SAT exam questions into three difficulty levels: easy, medium, and hard. Typically, the Digital SAT exam starts with medium-difficulty questions, and depending on the correct or wrong answers of the test-taker, the rest of the questions appear. Therefore, the points you will earn from easy questions will be lower while you will earn more points if you answer harder questions correctly.

Third and the last, the SAT exam is adaptive. If you had a good score in Module I, you will be asked harder questions in Module II. Therefore, the points you will earn from each question will depend on your performance respectively.

Digital SAT Prep Online Course Program

San Francisco Business School offers a comprehensive Digital SAT Prep Online Course taught by 99th-percentile SAT Instructors and exam experts. The program cracks down each content domain, skills, and knowledge testing point through 1,000+ realistic Digital SAT Exam questions. You will see all the different types of questions that may appear in Digital SAT.

SAT Score Chart

The SAT Score Chart is an old way of calculating your SAT scores from SAT practice tests. However, we’ve developed a Digital SAT Score Calculator. You can use it to calculate your SAT scores from full-length practice tests and from a practice SAT test to real test scale scores.

In any case, if you would like to use the SAT score chart, we are providing it below.

Note that, this Score Chart is valid when there are 66 Reading & Writing questions and 54 Math questions in the SAT practice test. If your practice test has a different number of questions, you can use our Digital SAT Score Calculator to calculate your scores.

How to Score a Digital SAT Practice Test

During your SAT exam prep, you will go through several practice tests, exercises, and quizzes. You may want to see your results from a practice SAT test to real test scale scores. Our Digital SAT Score Calculator does this adaptive calculation.

You can see an example of SAT Score Calculation for an 11-question practice test to real test scale scores below. If a student answers 9 out of 11 questions correctly, the adaptive SAT score will be 680 on a 200-800 scale.

 

What is the SAT Score Predictor?

Predictor means “a person or thing that predicts that something will happen in the future or will be a consequence of something.” SAT Score Predictor makes predictions about the SAT score for a practice test or quiz results. Actually, its function is as exactly as the SAT Score Calculator. However, some students search for SAT score predictors instead of score calculators.

What is a Good SAT Score?

Several students and parents ask us “What is a Good SAT Score?”, “What is the Best SAT Score I Should Get?”, and “Is My Score Good Enough?”. Well, the answer all depends on your expectations!

We’ve explained this in detail in our SAT Study Guide, Step #2. Before you start your SAT exam preparation, take a SAT practice test to see your results. The administrator of the SAT, The College Board, offers several full-length SAT Practice Tests. These tests are calibrated correctly and the distribution and difficulty of the questions are consistent as you will experience in your actual SAT exam.

Then, take a look at the colleges’ SAT score percentiles you are planning to apply for. We’ve given some of the colleges’s SAT score percentiles below. You can look for other Colleges’ SAT Score Percentiles and Acceptance rates in our post.

College	SAT Score Percentiles
Cal Tech	1530 – 1580
Harvard	1460 – 1580
MIT	1510 – 1580
Yale	1460 – 1580
Stanford	1420 – 1570
University of Michigan	1340-1560
Boston College	1330 – 1500
U.S. Military Academy	1210 – 1440
Purdue	1190 – 1430
Penn State U.-Univ. Park	1150 – 1340
Univ. of Miami	1250 – 1420

For instance, if you are planning to apply to Boston College, you should be scoring around 1330 and 1500. Note that, that is the average of all college applications. If you are planning to apply for a popular department of a college, you need to score more than these averages. For instance,  Economics, Finance, and Computer Science are popular departments at Boston College. Therefore, the score percentiles of the accepted students in these departments are expected to be above the 1330 – 1500 range.

So, if your SAT score is around 1350, it is a good SAT Score if you are planning to apply for Pen State or the University of Miami. However, it is not enough for Stanford, Yale, MIT or Princeton.

Depending on your initial result, if there is a huge gap from the target score, you should be studying harder. You can use our Digital SAT Score Calculator to calculate your scores in practice tests and quizzes.

💡You might be interested in seeing our Digital SAT Math Practice Test. It covers the hardest questions you may see on the SAT Math exam for each skill and knowledge testing point!

What is a Bad SAT Score?

As we’ve explained above, there are no good or bad SAT scores. It all depends on your expectations, the college you are planning to apply and the SAT score average. If you are applying for a popular college, you must score high. In any case, you should not score below the average, 1050, to secure a college application. So, we can consider below 1050 a bad SAT score as almost none of the colleges accept students below this score.

What is the SAT Passing Score?

SAT is not a fail-or-pass type of test. You sit for the exam, get an SAT score, and apply to colleges. The higher scores guarantee better colleges respectively.

Free Digital SAT Prep Course

SFBS offers a Free Digital SAT Prep Online Course. The course goes through particular skills and knowledge testing points and improves your problem-solving skills and test-taking strategies.

Average SAT Scores for Ivy League Colleges

Ivy League schools are some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 20 of the U.S. News & World Report National Universities ranking. We’ve listed the Average SAT Scores, percentiles, and % of applicants accepted for each Ivy League College in the table below.

College	SAT 25-75th Percentile	% of Applicants Accepted
Harvard	1460 – 1580	5
Yale	1460 – 1580	5
Princeton	1450 – 1570	6
Columbia	1470 – 1570	6
Brown	1440 – 1570	8
Univ. of Penn	1450 – 1570	9
Dartmouth	1440 – 1560	9
Cornell	1400 – 1540	11

Note that, although the Ivy League colleges are appointed as the best colleges, there are several other top-ranked colleges such as Stanford and MIT, which are not in the Ivy League.

What Are The Benefits of a 1600 SAT Score?

There are several benefits of getting a high score on the SAT exam. There are three major benefits of scoring well on the SAT exam.

1. The first one is the most obvious one that a high SAT exam score will increase your chances to be accepted to the college you are dreaming of.
2. The second benefit of a good SAT score is getting financial aid from institutions. Several colleges, foundations, or institutions offer financial aid for students. Many of them consider the academic success of the student as a merit. If you score high on the SAT exam, in case you will apply for financial aid, better SAT scores will help you to get the financial aid you need to pursue your college education.
3. Most of the scholarship programs consider SAT exam scores. If you have a high score on the SAT exam, you can have higher chances of getting scholarships respectively.

Therefore, do your best, get ready for the SAT exam, and score as high as possible on the SAT exam for a better future.

What is the SAT Score Percentile?

According to The College Board, the “Nationally Representative Sample Percentile” compares your performance to those of “all U.S. students in a particular grade, including those who don’t typically take the test.”

“Your SAT User Percentile – National” compares your performance against those of every college-bound SAT-taker in the 11th or 12th grades. “The Nationally Representative Sample Percentile” will be higher, because your “SAT User Percentile” doesn’t take into account students who don’t take the SAT or intend to go to college. Therefore, consider your “SAT User Percentile” when assessing your results from practice tests.

Your percentile tells you how you did on the SAT compared with everyone else who took the test. For example, if you got a composite percentile of 92, this means you scored higher than 92% of students on the whole test. If you got a percentile of 87 on the Math section, you did better than 87% of students on SAT Math.

SAT Score Percentile Range

SAT score percentile range is from 0 to 99. However, this is not a point. For instance, if your score percentile is 92%, it does not mean that your point is 92 or you scored 92% of the questions correctly. It means, your score is better than 92% of all SAT exam takers.

We’ve listed the SAT score ranges and their percentiles below. Since it is a 100-row list, you can expand it by clicking the link below.

How to Improve SAT Scores

We’ve identified the 7 steps to get a high score on the SAT in our SAT Math Prep post. You can read it in detail in that post, we’ve just provided a summary of those steps below.

1. Prepare A Solid SAT Study Guide

The first and most important point to SAT Math success is having a solid study plan.

2. Determine Your Weak Areas

To determine your weak areas, make a full-length SAT Prep Practice Test. Note down your scores in each content domain, skill, and knowledge testing point. The lowest score percentages are your weakest areas.

💡You can use our SAT Math Exercises which has 50 exercises on all SAT Math domains. You can identify your weak areas with the help of SAT Math Exercises.

3. Go Through Your Weak Areas

The majority of the students feel comfortable practicing the topics they already know well. However, getting better in your weak areas will make a difference in your SAT score. List your weak content domains and skill and knowledge testing points. Do as much practice as possible to improve your results in your weak areas. Improvement in your weaker areas will bring you the highest score improvements.

4. Attend a Digital SAT Prep Online Course

After teaching thousands of SAT students for the exam, we can tell that most of them liked the self-paced delivery so they could study when they wanted to, not when they were forced to sit for a class. This is very important. Students must study when they feel the best time to do so. Otherwise, they will lose their concentration easily during their study.

Watch SAT Math Prep Online Course – Sample Lecture on YouTube

We have a sample 8-minute video lecture from our SAT Math Prep Online Course on YouTube. You can watch below.

5. Note Down and Revisit Your Wrong Answers

Going through your wrong answers will improve your skills in your weak areas the most. Because, you will remember the mistakes you make, and in case you see a similar question next time, you will decrease your chances of making the same mistake again. When you are practicing SAT Math Prep questions, mark your wrong answers. Once you finish the book, quiz, or practice test go back and review your wrong answers one more time. Take notes on why you make those mistakes and go through the notes frequently.

6. Take Notes During Your SAT Math Prep

There are several SAT Math Prep cheat sheets, formulas, or guides. However, none of them will be as good as you will prepare for yourself.

When studying for the SAT Math, take notes for important points. Go through your notes every week or at least a month. Going through your notes will keep your memory fresh around those topics.

🗎 Download the 15-page Digital SAT Math Formula Sheet.

7. Go and Crack the SAT Exam

Try not to study hard on your exam week. You can go through your notes, practice a few questions, or maybe go over your wrong answers. Make sure you will have a good sleep before the exam day and relax. If you practice enough, the questions will be similar to the ones you practiced several times before.

We recommend using your own laptop which you use regularly for the SAT Exam. While the College Board allows school-owned devices or they can provide a device for the exam day, using a new device may cost you additional time as you will need time to get used to a new keyboard, screen, etc. Therefore, we recommend using your own laptop for the exam. Make sure you bring your device fully charged on the exam as there may not be enough power outlets in your testing room.

Colleges That Do Not Require SAT or ACT Score

Some colleges do not require SAT or ACT scores from applicants. Some schools only exempt applicants who meet minimum grade or class rank criteria; others use ACT/SAT scores solely for course placement. We’ve listed the Test Free and Test Optional Colleges below.

Test Free Colleges

These colleges do not require an SAT or ACT score during application. Since there are 87 colleges on the list, we’ve shared it on a different page. You can see the Test Free Colleges.

Test Optional Colleges

While an SAT or ACT score is not mandatory for applying to test-optional colleges, in case you provide SAT or ACT scores, the admission committee will consider your exam scores. Therefore, a good score on the SAT exam may help to outpace other applicants for test-optional colleges. Since there are more than 2,000 colleges on the list, we’ve shared it on a different page. You can see the Test Optional Colleges.