Are SAT scores just higher now than the mid/late 90s?
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Anonymous
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Just starting this journey with a soon to be 9th grader, so we're just starting to figure out the basics. DH and I both realize that college admissions has gotten a lot tougher than when we graduated high school in the mid/late 90s so we are definitely not pressuring our kid for any particular type of school or anything. Honestly he still needs the first few years in HS to figure out what he needs whether that's a small supportive environment or a big flagship with the football scene or whatever.
But as I'm looking at posts here, CC, and just anecdotally, are there just far more kids getting 1400 and 1500+ SAT scores than their used to be? I'm sure the data distribution exists someplace but I haven't run across it yet. I mean I went to a good public HS in NJ - though no where near the top in NJ; yet DS's Va HS current day is supposed to be MUCH better than the current day standing of my NJ HS. When I was there, my NJ HS usually sent about 15 out of 400 graduates to the Ivys every year and then probably another 15 or so to Duke, Northwestern, NYU, Gtown etc. And even there, it really seemed like a handful of the top super stars would have a 1450+ type of score; certainly not all 30 kids going to the Ivys + top 10 schools had 1500s. It SHOCKS me now that I got into Penn - Wharton undergrad with just a 1360, as nowadays that score would be a - don't even apply; and no I didn't have any superior ECs, they were just all in school type clubs. Has something changed with the SATs? Do all upper middle class kids do years of SAT prep classes now? Or just smarter kids/the game got more competitive in the last 2 decades where I obviously wasn't paying attention to it? |
Anonymous
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I took the SAT in 1987. It was harder then.
For example: 1. Each question had five choices - now it's four. Easier now to narrow down to two answers & guess. 2. No longer deducts points for incorrect answers. 3. You can superscore & use score choice. |
Anonymous
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Take a sample test, see how it jibes with your recollection, and decide how much value the current test should have.
My impression it is much simpler, and yes that means scores should be higher, but even then the score doesn’t indicate much. |
Anonymous
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More kids are scoring over 1400. According to the Common App report, during the 2022 admissions cycle, 76K kids applied to college with an SAT score of >1500 (including ACT equivalent) AND an additional 98K in the 1400 range.
Source: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ca.research.publish/Research_Briefs_2022/2022_12_09_Apps_Per_Applicant_ResearchBrief.pdf |
Anonymous
| I think that prepping and retakes are also much more common. In the 90's I got a 1330 on the first try with no prep, and that was fine for where I wanted to go to college. Now it seems like everyone preps and retakes it as well. |
Anonymous
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I graduated from HS in 1993 and pretty much everyone that was college bound at my HS took the SAT exactly twice-once in the spring of junior year and again in the fall of senior year. I think there weren't as many testing dates at that time either.
I remember seeing a newspaper article around that time about students who had received a perfect 1600 on the SAT--there were only about 16 or 17 of them in the whole US (that year) according to the article. One boy in my school got a perfect 800 on the math and missed one question on the verbal. I think that meant he got a 1560, and we were all in awe. |
Anonymous
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The SAT has changed something like four times and the scores have been "recentered" as well.
You can see a simple history of the changes over time on wikipedia. The test is now going digital and my understanding is that it will be shorter (2 hrs?). I also recommend Art Sawyer's blog at Compass Prep. |
Anonymous
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I took the SAT in 1997. Upper middle class family in NJ - I did take the SATs a few times to raise my score as the Ivys were my goal, but my SAT prep consisted of 2-3 books from Barnes & Noble and some CD with cartoon-ish computer program.
In my public HS in NJ, VERY few/almost no one did months of SAT prep. Yet just 4 yrs later, applying to law school, Kaplan was VERY much a thing - I took it for LSAT prep and they'd have tons of packed classes every weekend for HS kids. I got into Cornell with a sub 1400 score. |
Anonymous
| Several redesigns as well as at least one recentering have resulted in much higher SAT scores. over the past few decades. |
Anonymous
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Yes things have changed.
Looking at that wiki referenced above, a 1350 in 1984 put you in the 98th percentile. In 2022 a 1350 puts you at the 90th percentile; 98th percentile is now 1500. I really wish a SAT percentile chart existed for the late 90s. |
Anonymous
Yes, scores have been re-baselined. More kids taking the test multiple times, super scoring, etc., The numbers above are correct and easily fill the freshman class of the top 50 schools. Does that mean you can't get in with below a 1400, no, it just means it will be a lot harder. |
Anonymous
Same! The SAT was "normalized" in 1995. So you can add ~70-80 points to your verbal and maybe 10-30 to your math from back then (1987) to get an equivalent today. So if you got a 1400 then, it's closer to a 1500 now. Also, we took the test once, we didn't prep (beyond sharpening enough #2 pencils to take with us on Saturday morning). The PSAT was our test prep. And the deducting points for incorrect answers kept people from having 1600 scores---we had to decide "how much do I think I know the correct answer or should I leave it blank". Much easier to be able to guess on ones we aren't certain. |
Anonymous
+1 There are many people on this board that think their high stats kid (e.g., +1500/4.0+ GPA) kid is one of 10, at the most 20K students applying to highly selective colleges a given admissions year. Regarding the competition, they think their kid is swimming in a pond when in fact, they are in an ocean. |
Anonymous
Might be because even despite the data saying otherwise - even if they read the data - parents still have it stuck in their own heads from the 80s-90s that a kid with a 1500+ is an absolute lock anywhere. Because 30-40 years ago they WERE pretty much a lock and would have multiple ivy offers to choose from. But as even this conversation shows, when most of us were in HS there were 1-2 kids in a public high school cracking the 1500s. Now if a dozen or a few dozen kids are cracking 1500 at every decent school, that score just doesn't set you apart the same way. |
Anonymous
| The renormalizing in 1995 was huge and a mistake as there is now way too much compression. I got a 1560 in 1989 and that was considered outstanding. My kid just got the same and it is a solid “ehh….I guess report it.” |