Is it suddenly harder to get high score in SAT or were people always lying?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is making me feel like my kid is holding onto a golden ticket with a 35 ACT single test, not superscored. Mostly applying to UCs, so that score won’t even help. Is it really that big of a deal?

My kid also had 35 in single sitting. College counselor at his HS didn’t seem that jazzed but he got into his first choice school early but didn’t apply to an Ivy.

Is he NMSF from VA, DC, MD? That moves the needle much more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe we have SAT score conspiracy truthers now. “My child didn’t score over 1500, therefore all students, parents, and schools claiming that anyone ever scores over 1500 are part of one enormous conspiracy to pretend that my kid isn’t the smartest!!”

What a world.

And I can't believe there are posters on the dcum collage boards that don't understand how standardized tests like the SAT are scored and weighted.

1500% + scores are in the upper, upper 90th percentile range.

Scoring in the 99% on the SAT does not mean your kid got 99% of the questions correct.

It means they scored higher than 99% of the people taking that test that day.

The test scoring is weighted down to individual questions to ensure that if your kid is scoring in the 99% range, then 99% of the scores are going to be lower than 1500.

This means in your DC private school class of 300 students, there is only going to be around 3-4 students scoring above 1500. A fcps high school with 600-700 in a senior class is only going to have 6-10 kids in that above 1500 range.

A 1580 is going to be in the 99.9% range, so you are only going to get one of those kids every year or every couple of years.

Unless the kid is at TJ, there is almost zero chance that your kid's school is going to have "many" kids scoring in the upper 1500s. That is simply impossible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this. 1510 and every score above that is a 99th percentile score. Does that mean exactly one percent of students get 1510+ scores?

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had one kid taking the SAT in 2022 (when it was on paper) and one who took the digital year. Lots of kids at their private getting over 1500 both years

I bet if you looked at Naviance, you eould see that very few kids at your private school scored over 1500.

Our high performing high school has between 625-725 seniors on a given year. In all the years we have had kids there, naviance only shows around a dozen kids breaking 1500 on the SAT.

There is zero chance that your private school with a senior class of a couple hundred kids has "lots" of kids scoring over 1500.

How could you possible know this? If it’s truly a high-performing high school then I’d guess that at least 10% of the student body would have 1500+ (at least!).

Nope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college in 1997 and I superscored. I took the SAT twice and my higher math score and higher verbal score were from different dates.

We were intending for our daughter to superscore. She took the test 3 times. But it just so happens that her highest scores both occurred on the same date.

Super scoring is new,,only a few years old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Side question and didn't want to start another SAT thread: Do you subconsciously have a higher expectation for a boy's SAT score versus a girl's? I ask because data show that at the high end (1520+), boys-to-girls ratio is roughly 2:1. Do AOs hold the same expectation? In other words, if a boy and a girl both achieve the same 1550, would you or AOs think of the girl's score as being more impressive?

The boys score is more impressive.

SATs were weighter to favor girls a decade back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe we have SAT score conspiracy truthers now. “My child didn’t score over 1500, therefore all students, parents, and schools claiming that anyone ever scores over 1500 are part of one enormous conspiracy to pretend that my kid isn’t the smartest!!”

What a world.

And I can't believe there are posters on the dcum collage boards that don't understand how standardized tests like the SAT are scored and weighted.

1500% + scores are in the upper, upper 90th percentile range.

Scoring in the 99% on the SAT does not mean your kid got 99% of the questions correct.

It means they scored higher than 99% of the people taking that test that day.

The test scoring is weighted down to individual questions to ensure that if your kid is scoring in the 99% range, then 99% of the scores are going to be lower than 1500.

This means in your DC private school class of 300 students, there is only going to be around 3-4 students scoring above 1500. A fcps high school with 600-700 in a senior class is only going to have 6-10 kids in that above 1500 range.

A 1580 is going to be in the 99.9% range, so you are only going to get one of those kids every year or every couple of years.

Unless the kid is at TJ, there is almost zero chance that your kid's school is going to have "many" kids scoring in the upper 1500s. That is simply impossible

You imagine that scores are much more evenly distributed among high schools than is in fact the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s harder to score at the very high end since the test changed most recently

A lot on reddit about this. The average is shifting down about 50 points

I believe the college board made the digital SAT harder around January 2025 because too many kids were getting really high scores on the digital SAT

Or they just don’t know how to game it yet. Scoring high on the SATs is knowing how to test, test prep companies have figured out and teach how to quickly and methodically identify the answers. The digital format is still new, give it a few years and the test prep industry will adjust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe we have SAT score conspiracy truthers now. “My child didn’t score over 1500, therefore all students, parents, and schools claiming that anyone ever scores over 1500 are part of one enormous conspiracy to pretend that my kid isn’t the smartest!!”

What a world.

And I can't believe there are posters on the dcum collage boards that don't understand how standardized tests like the SAT are scored and weighted.

1500% + scores are in the upper, upper 90th percentile range.

Scoring in the 99% on the SAT does not mean your kid got 99% of the questions correct.

It means they scored higher than 99% of the people taking that test that day.

The test scoring is weighted down to individual questions to ensure that if your kid is scoring in the 99% range, then 99% of the scores are going to be lower than 1500.

This means in your DC private school class of 300 students, there is only going to be around 3-4 students scoring above 1500. A fcps high school with 600-700 in a senior class is only going to have 6-10 kids in that above 1500 range.

A 1580 is going to be in the 99.9% range, so you are only going to get one of those kids every year or every couple of years.

Unless the kid is at TJ, there is almost zero chance that your kid's school is going to have "many" kids scoring in the upper 1500s. That is simply impossible

You imagine that scores are much more evenly distributed among high schools than is in fact the case.

+1

The test is normed across all test takers around the world, not just the kids at an individual HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe we have SAT score conspiracy truthers now. “My child didn’t score over 1500, therefore all students, parents, and schools claiming that anyone ever scores over 1500 are part of one enormous conspiracy to pretend that my kid isn’t the smartest!!”

What a world.

And I can't believe there are posters on the dcum collage boards that don't understand how standardized tests like the SAT are scored and weighted.

1500% + scores are in the upper, upper 90th percentile range.

Scoring in the 99% on the SAT does not mean your kid got 99% of the questions correct.

It means they scored higher than 99% of the people taking that test that day.

The test scoring is weighted down to individual questions to ensure that if your kid is scoring in the 99% range, then 99% of the scores are going to be lower than 1500.

This means in your DC private school class of 300 students, there is only going to be around 3-4 students scoring above 1500. A fcps high school with 600-700 in a senior class is only going to have 6-10 kids in that above 1500 range.

A 1580 is going to be in the 99.9% range, so you are only going to get one of those kids every year or every couple of years.

Unless the kid is at TJ, there is almost zero chance that your kid's school is going to have "many" kids scoring in the upper 1500s. That is simply impossible

You imagine that scores are much more evenly distributed among high schools than is in fact the case.

This. I’m the PP who claimed 80 kids in a class of 375 at our NJ public (not a magnet school) had 1500 or above. I went back and looked at the data to make sure. (I am somewhat embarrassed to say I did a deep dive into the data earlier this year to try to get a sense of where my kid is ranked, since the school doesn’t rank.)

In the class of 2025, 82 kids had at least a 1500 and/or a 35 ACT, and 37 of those had a 1550 or above.

In the class of 2024 it was fewer (69 and 35), maybe because more kids didn’t test.

This is more kids than had a 4.0 after junior year (22 and 19, respectively).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe we have SAT score conspiracy truthers now. “My child didn’t score over 1500, therefore all students, parents, and schools claiming that anyone ever scores over 1500 are part of one enormous conspiracy to pretend that my kid isn’t the smartest!!”

What a world.

And I can't believe there are posters on the dcum collage boards that don't understand how standardized tests like the SAT are scored and weighted.

1500% + scores are in the upper, upper 90th percentile range.

Scoring in the 99% on the SAT does not mean your kid got 99% of the questions correct.

It means they scored higher than 99% of the people taking that test that day.

The test scoring is weighted down to individual questions to ensure that if your kid is scoring in the 99% range, then 99% of the scores are going to be lower than 1500.

This means in your DC private school class of 300 students, there is only going to be around 3-4 students scoring above 1500. A fcps high school with 600-700 in a senior class is only going to have 6-10 kids in that above 1500 range.

A 1580 is going to be in the 99.9% range, so you are only going to get one of those kids every year or every couple of years.

Unless the kid is at TJ, there is almost zero chance that your kid's school is going to have "many" kids scoring in the upper 1500s. That is simply impossible

You imagine that scores are much more evenly distributed among high schools than is in fact the case.

This is wrong, on so many levels. High performing high schools will have dozens of 1550+ plus scorers. A lower performing high school might have zero for a decade.

There are public, non-magnet high schools, in high selection index states which have 30 plus national merit semifinalists in California, etc. A selection index of 224 is roughly equivalent to a 1530 on the SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college in 1997 and I superscored. I took the SAT twice and my higher math score and higher verbal score were from different dates.

We were intending for our daughter to superscore. She took the test 3 times. But it just so happens that her highest scores both occurred on the same date.

Super scoring is new,,only a few years old.

DP. Superscoring is not new. Realize that there are people in these forums who have been around college admissions a lot longer than you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college in 1997 and I superscored. I took the SAT twice and my higher math score and higher verbal score were from different dates.

We were intending for our daughter to superscore. She took the test 3 times. But it just so happens that her highest scores both occurred on the same date.

Super scoring is new,,only a few years old.

DP. Superscoring is not new. Realize that there are people in these forums who have been around college admissions a lot longer than you.

+1

From what I'm gathering, up until fairly recently, much of the country was unfamiliar with the college admissions process and just took a basic approach: take the SAT once and only apply to a few schools. But, even decades ago, there were areas of the country that took the whole college application process way more seriously and took the SAT multiple times, did test prep, know about "super scoring" (even though it wasn't called that then), applied to a bunch of colleges, etc.

[Anonymous]

This is interesting. I considered myself very well-informed about the college application process when I applied in the early 90s, and I was not aware that super-scoring was a thing. But I was in TN where things weren’t as intense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is interesting. I considered myself very well-informed about the college application process when I applied in the early 90s, and I was not aware that super-scoring was a thing. But I was in TN where things weren’t as intense.

It wasn't called that, but that is what people did - take the highest score for each section.