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The SAT ( ) is a
standardized test A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predete ...
widely used for
college admissions in the United States College admissions in the United States refers to the process of applying for entrance to institutions of higher education for undergraduate study at one of the nation's colleges or universities.Robin Mamlet and Christine VanDeVelde, College ...
. Since its debut in 1926, its name and
scoring Score or scorer may refer to: *Test score, the result of an exam or test Business * Score Digital, now part of Bauer Radio * Score Entertainment, a former American trading card design and manufacturing company * Score Media, a former Canadian m ...
have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Scholastic Assessment Test, then the SAT I: Reasoning Test, then the SAT Reasoning Test, then simply the SAT. The SAT is wholly owned, developed, and published by the
College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs a ...
, a private, not-for-profit organization in the United States. It is administered on behalf of the College Board by the
Educational Testing Service Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address. ETS develops var ...
, which until recently developed the SAT as well. The test is intended to assess students' readiness for college. The SAT was originally designed not to be aligned with high school curricula, but several adjustments were made for the version of the SAT introduced in 2016, and College Board president
David Coleman David Robert Coleman OBE (26 April 1926 – 21 December 2013) was a British sports commentator and television presenter who worked for the BBC for 46 years. He covered eleven Summer Olympic Games from 1960 to 2000 and six FIFA World Cups from ...
has said that he also wanted to make the test reflect more closely what students learn in high school with the new
Common Core standards The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, is an educational initiative from 2010 that details what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the concl ...
. Starting with the 2015–16 school year, the College Board began working with
Khan Academy Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also in ...
to provide free SAT preparation. On January 19, 2021, the College Board announced the discontinuation of the optional essay section, as well as its SAT Subject Tests, after June 2021. While a considerable amount of research has been done on the SAT, many questions and misconceptions remain. Outside of college admissions, the SAT is also used by researchers studying human intelligence in general and intellectual precociousness in particular, and by some employers in the recruitment process.


Function

The SAT is typically taken by
high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
juniors and seniors. The College Board states that the SAT is intended to measure literacy, numeracy and writing skills that are needed for academic success in
college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...
. They state that the SAT assesses how well the test-takers analyze and solve problems—skills they learned in school that they will need in college. However, the test is administered under a tight time limit (sped) to help produce a range of scores. The College Board also states that 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. Various studies conducted over the lifetime of the SAT show a
statistically significant In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis (simply by chance alone). More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the p ...
increase in
correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
of high school grades and college freshman grades when the SAT is factored in. The predictive validity and powers of the SAT are topics of active research in psychometrics. There are substantial differences in funding, curricula, grading, and difficulty among U.S. secondary schools due to U.S.
federalism Federalism is a combined or compound mode of government that combines a general government (the central or "federal" government) with regional governments (Province, provincial, State (sub-national), state, Canton (administrative division), can ...
, local control, and the prevalence of private, distance, and
home schooled Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an onlin ...
students. SAT (and ACT) scores are intended to supplement the secondary school record and help admission officers put local data—such as course work, grades, and class rank—in a national perspective. Historically, the SAT was more widely used by students living in coastal states and the ACT was more widely used by students in the Midwest and South; in recent years, however, an increasing number of students on the East and West coasts have been taking the ACT. Since 2007, all four-year colleges and universities in the United States that require a test as part of an application for admission will accept either the SAT or ACT, and as of Fall 2022, over 1400 four-year colleges and universities do not require any standardized test scores at all for admission, though some of them are applying this policy only temporarily due to the coronavirus pandemic. The SAT takes three hours to finish and costs US$60.00, excluding late fees, with additional processing fees if the SAT is taken outside the United States. Scores on the SAT range from 400 to 1600, combining test results from two 200-to-800-point sections: the Mathematics section and the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section. Although taking the SAT, or its competitor the ACT, is required for freshman entry to many colleges and universities in the United States, during the 2010s, many institutions made these entrance exams optional, but this did not stop the students from attempting to achieve high scores as they and their parents are skeptical of what "optional" means in this context. In fact, the test-taking population was increasing steadily. And while this may have resulted in a long-term decline in scores, experts cautioned against using this to gauge the scholastic levels of the entire U.S. population.


Structure

The SAT has two main sections, namely Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW, normally known as the "English" portion of the test) and the Math section. These are both further broken down into four sections: Reading, Writing and Language, Math (no calculator), and Math (calculator allowed). The test taker was also optionally able to write an essay which, in that case, is the fifth test section. The total time for the scored portion of the SAT is three hours (or three hours and fifty minutes if the optional essay section was taken). Some test takers who are not taking the essay may also have a fifth section, which is used, at least in part, for the pretesting of questions that may appear on future administrations of the SAT. (These questions are not included in the computation of the SAT score.) Two section scores result from taking the SAT: Evidence-Based
Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...
and
Writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, or Word processor, digitally represented Symbols (semiot ...
, and
Math Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
. Section scores are reported on a scale of 200 to 800, and each section score is a multiple of ten. A total score for the SAT is calculated by adding the two section scores, resulting in total scores that range from 400 to 1600. In addition to the two section scores, three "test" scores on a scale of 10 to 40 are reported, one for each of Reading, Writing and Language, and Math, with increment of 1 for Reading / Writing and Language, and 0.5 for Math. There are also two cross-test scores that each range from 10 to 40 points: Analysis in History/Social Studies and Analysis in Science. The essay, if taken, was scored separately from the two section scores. Two people score each essay by each awarding 1 to 4 points in each of three categories: Reading, Analysis, and Writing. These two scores from the different examiners are then combined to give a total score from 2 to 8 points per category. Though sometimes people quote their essay score out of 24, the College Board themselves do not combine the different categories to give one essay score, instead giving a score for each category. There is no penalty or negative marking for guessing on the SAT: scores are based on the number of questions answered correctly. The optional essay will not be offered after the June 2021 administration. College Board said it would discontinue the essay section because "there are other ways for students to demonstrate their mastery of essay writing," including the test's reading and writing portion. It also acknowledged that the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
had played a role in the change, accelerating 'a process already underway'.


Reading Test

The Reading Test of the SAT contains one section of 52 questions and a time limit of 65 minutes. All questions are multiple-choice and based on reading passages. Tables, graphs, and charts may accompany some passages, but no math is required to correctly answer the corresponding questions. There are five passages (up to two of which may be a pair of smaller passages) on the Reading Test and 10-11 questions per passage or passage pair. SAT Reading passages draw from three main fields: history, social studies, and science. Each SAT Reading Test always includes: one passage from U.S. or world literature; one passage from either a U.S. founding document or a related text; one passage about economics, psychology, sociology, or another social science; and, two science passages. Answers to all of the questions are based only on the content stated in or implied by the passage or passage pair. The Reading Test contributes (with the Writing and Language Test) to two subscores, each ranging from 1 to 15 points: *Command of Evidence *Words in Context


Writing and Language Test

The Writing and Language Test of the SAT is made up of one section with 44 multiple-choice questions and a time limit of 35 minutes. As with the Reading Test, all questions are based on reading passages which may be accompanied by tables, graphs, and charts. The test taker will be asked to read the passages and suggest corrections or improvements for the contents underlined. Reading passages on this test range in content from topic arguments to nonfiction narratives in a variety of subjects. The skills being evaluated include: increasing the clarity of argument; improving word choice; improving analysis of topics in social studies and science; changing sentence or word structure to increase organizational quality and impact of writing; and, fixing or improving sentence structure, word usage, and punctuation. The Writing and Language Test reports two subscores, each ranging from 1 to 15 points: *Expression of Ideas *Standard English Conventions


Mathematics

The
mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
portion of the SAT is divided into two sections: Math Test – No Calculator and Math Test – Calculator. In total, the SAT math test is 80 minutes long and includes 58 questions: 45
multiple choice Multiple choice (MC), objective response or MCQ (for multiple choice question) is a form of an objective assessment in which respondents are asked to select only correct answers from the choices offered as a list. The multiple choice format is m ...
questions and 13 grid-in questions. The multiple choice questions have four possible answers; the grid-in questions are free response and require the test taker to provide an answer. * The Math Test – No Calculator section has 20 questions (15 multiple choice and 5 grid-in) and lasts 25 minutes. * The Math Test – Calculator section has 38 questions (30 multiple choice and 8 grid-in) and lasts 55 minutes. Several scores are provided to the test taker for the math test. A subscore (on a scale of 1 to 15) is reported for each of three categories of math content: *"Heart of Algebra" (linear equations, systems of linear equations, and linear functions) *"Problem Solving and Data Analysis" (statistics, modeling, and problem-solving skills) *"Passport to Advanced Math" (non-linear expressions, radicals, exponentials and other topics that form the basis of more advanced math). A test score for the math test is reported on a scale of 10 to 40, with an increment of 0.5, and a section score (equal to the test score multiplied by 20) is reported on a scale of 200 to 800.


Calculator use

All scientific and most graphing
calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...
s, including
Computer Algebra System A computer algebra system (CAS) or symbolic algebra system (SAS) is any mathematical software with the ability to manipulate mathematical expressions in a way similar to the traditional manual computations of mathematicians and scientists. The de ...
(CAS) calculators, are permitted on the SAT Math – Calculator section only. All four-function calculators are allowed as well; however, these devices are not recommended. All mobile phone and smartphone calculators, calculators with typewriter-like (
QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
) keyboards, laptops and other portable computers, and calculators capable of accessing the Internet are not permitted. Research was conducted by the College Board to study the effect of calculator use on SAT I: Reasoning Test math scores. The study found that performance on the math section was
associated Associated may refer to: *Associated, former name of Avon, Contra Costa County, California * Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto, a school in Canada *Associated Newspapers, former name of DMG Media, a British publishing company See also *Associati ...
with the extent of calculator use: those using calculators on about one third to one half of the items averaged higher scores than those using calculators more or less frequently. However, the effect was "more likely to have been the result of able students using calculators differently than less able students rather than calculator use per se." There is some evidence that the frequent use of a calculator in school outside of the testing situation has a positive effect on test performance compared to those who do not use calculators in school.


Style of questions

Most of the questions on the SAT, except for the grid-in math responses, are
multiple choice Multiple choice (MC), objective response or MCQ (for multiple choice question) is a form of an objective assessment in which respondents are asked to select only correct answers from the choices offered as a list. The multiple choice format is m ...
; all multiple-choice questions have four answer choices, one of which is correct. Thirteen of the questions on the math portion of the SAT (about 22% of all the math questions) are not multiple choice. They instead require the test taker to bubble in a number in a four-column grid. All questions on each section of the SAT are weighted equally. For each correct answer, one raw point is added. No points are deducted for incorrect answers. The final score is derived from the raw score; the precise conversion chart varies between test administrations.


Logistics


Frequency

The SAT is offered seven times a year in the United States: in August, October, November, December, March, May, and June. For international students SAT is offered four times a year: in October, December, March and May (2020 exception: To cover worldwide May cancelation, an additional September exam was introduced, and August was made available to international test-takers as well). The test is typically offered on the first Saturday of the month for the October, November, December, May, and June administrations. The test was taken by 1,737,678 high school graduates in the class of 2022. Candidates wishing to take the test may register online at the College Board's website or by mail at least three weeks before the test date.


Fees

As of 2022, the SAT costs US$60.00, plus additional fees if testing outside the United States. The College Board makes fee waivers available for low-income students. Additional fees apply for late registration, standby testing, registration changes, scores by telephone, and extra score reports (beyond the four provided for free).


Accommodation for candidates with disabilities

Students with verifiable disabilities, including physical and learning disabilities, are eligible to take the SAT with accommodations. The standard time increase for students requiring additional time due to learning disabilities or physical handicaps is time + 50%; time + 100% is also offered.


Scaled scores and percentiles

Students receive their online score reports approximately two to three weeks after test administration (longer for mailed, paper scores). Included in the report is the total score (the sum of the two section scores, with each section graded on a scale of 200–800) and three subscores (in reading, writing, and analysis, each on a scale of 2–8) for the optional essay. Students may also receive, for an additional fee, various score verification services, including (for select test administrations) the Question and Answer Service, which provides the test questions, the student's answers, the correct answers, and the type and difficulty of each question. In addition, students receive two
percentile In statistics, a ''k''-th percentile (percentile score or centile) is a score ''below which'' a given percentage ''k'' of scores in its frequency distribution falls (exclusive definition) or a score ''at or below which'' a given percentage falls ...
scores, each of which is defined by the College Board as the percentage of students in a comparison group with equal or lower test scores. One of the percentiles, called the "Nationally Representative Sample Percentile", uses as a comparison group all 11th and 12th graders in the United States, regardless of whether or not they took the SAT. This percentile is theoretical and is derived using methods of
statistical inference Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying probability distribution, distribution of probability.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical ...
. The second percentile, called the "SAT User Percentile", uses actual scores from a comparison group of recent United States students that took the SAT. For example, for the school year 2019–2020, the SAT User Percentile was based on the test scores of students in the graduating classes of 2018 and 2019 who took the SAT (specifically, the 2016 revision) during high school. Students receive both types of percentiles for their total score as well as their section scores.


Percentiles for total scores (2022)


Percentiles for total scores (2006)

The following chart summarizes the original percentiles used for the version of the SAT administered in March 2005 through January 2016. These percentiles used students in the graduating class of 2006 as the comparison group.


Percentiles for total scores (1984)

The version of the SAT administered before April 1995 had a very high ceiling. For example, in the 1985–1986 school year, only 9 students out of 1.7 million test takers obtained a score of 1600. In 2015 the average score for the Class of 2015 was 1490 out of a maximum 2400. That was down 7 points from the previous class's mark and was the lowest composite score of the past decade.


SAT–ACT score comparisons

The College Board and ACT, Inc., conducted a joint study of students who took both the SAT and the ACT between September 2004 (for the ACT) or March 2005 (for the SAT) and June 2006. Tables were provided to concord scores for students taking the SAT after January 2005 and before March 2016. In May 2016, the College Board released concordance tables to concord scores on the SAT used from March 2005 through January 2016 to the SAT used since March 2016, as well as tables to concord scores on the SAT used since March 2016 to the ACT. In 2018, the College Board, in partnership with the ACT, introduced a new concordance table to better compare how a student would fare one test to another. This is now considered the official concordance to be used by college professionals and is replacing the one from 2016. The new concordance no longer features the old SAT (out of 2,400), just the new SAT (out of 1,600) and the ACT (out of 36). As of 2018, the most appropriate corresponding SAT score point for the given ACT score is also shown in the table below.


Elucidation


Preparation

Pioneered by Stanley Kaplan in 1946 with a 64-hour course, SAT preparation has become a highly lucrative field. Many companies and organizations offer test preparation in the form of books, classes, online courses, and tutoring. The test preparation industry began almost simultaneously with the introduction of university entrance exams in the U.S. and flourished from the start. Test-preparation scams are a genuine problem for parents and students. In general, East Asian Americans, especially
Korean Americans Korean Americans are Americans of Korean ancestry (mostly from South Korea). In 2015, the Korean-American community constituted about 0.56% of the United States population, or about 1.82 million people, and was the fifth-largest Asian American ...
, are the most likely to take private SAT preparation courses while
African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
prefer one-on-one tutoring for remedial learning. Nevertheless, the College Board maintains that the SAT is essentially uncoachable and research by the College Board and the National Association of College Admission Counseling suggests that tutoring courses result in an average increase of about 20 points on the math section and 10 points on the verbal section. Indeed, researchers have shown time and again that preparation courses tend to offer at best a modest boost to test scores. Like IQ scores, which are a strong correlate, SAT scores tend to be stable over time, meaning SAT preparation courses offer only a limited advantage. An early meta-analysis (from 1983) found similar results and noted "the size of the coaching effect estimated from the matched or randomized studies (10 points) seems too small to be practically important." Statisticians Ben Domingue and Derek C. Briggs examined data from the Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 and found that the effects of coaching were only statistically significant for mathematics; moreover, coaching had a greater effect on certain students than others, especially those who have taken rigorous courses and those of high socioeconomic status. A 2012 systematic literature review estimated a coaching effect of 23 and 32 points for the math and verbal tests, respectively. A 2016 meta-analysis estimated the effect size to be 0.09 and 0.16 for the verbal and math sections respectively, although there was a large degree of heterogeneity. Meanwhile, a 2011 study found that the effects of one-on-one tutoring to be minimal among all ethnic groups. Public misunderstanding of how to prepare for the SAT continues to be exploited by the preparation industry. While there is a link between family background and taking an SAT preparation course, not all students benefit equally from such an investment. In fact, any average gains in SAT scores due to such courses are primarily due to improvements among East Asian Americans. When this group is broken down even further, Korean Americans are more likely to take SAT prep courses than
Chinese Americans Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...
, taking full advantage of their Church communities and ethnic economy. The College Board announced a partnership with the non-profit organization Khan Academy to offer free test-preparation materials starting in the 2015–16 academic year to help level the playing field for students from low-income families. Students may also bypass costly preparation programs using the more affordable official guide from the College Board and with solid studying habits. There is some evidence that taking the PSAT at least once can help students do better on the SAT; moreover, like the case for the SAT, top scorers on the PSAT could earn scholarships. According to cognitive scientist
Sian Beilock Sian Leah Beilock ( ; born January 10, 1976) is a cognitive scientist who is the eighth president of Barnard College and president-elect of Dartmouth College. Previous to serving at Barnard College, President Beilock spent 12 years at the Univer ...
, 'choking', or substandard performance on important occasions, such as taking the SAT, can be prevented by doing plenty of practice questions and proctored exams to improve
procedural memory Procedural memory is a type of implicit memory (unconscious, long-term memory) which aids the performance of particular types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences. Procedural memory guides the processes we perform, ...
, making use of the booklet to write down intermediate steps to avoid overloading working memory, and writing a diary entry about one's anxieties on the day of the exam to enhance self-empathy and positive self-image.


Predictive validity and powers

In 2009, education researchers Richard C. Atkinson and Saul Geiser from the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
(UC) system argued that high school GPA is better than the SAT at predicting college grades regardless of high school type or quality. It is the hope of some UC officials to increase the number of African- and Latino-American students attending and they plan to do so by casting doubt on the SAT and by decreasing the number of Asian-American students, who are heavily represented in the UC student body (29.5%) relative to their share of the population of California (13.6%). However, their assertions on the predictive validity of the SAT has been contested by the UC academic senate. In its 2020 report, the UC academic senate found that the SAT was better than high school GPA at predicting first year GPA, and just as good as high school GPA at predicting undergraduate GPA, first year retention, and graduation. This predictive validity was found to hold across demographic groups. A series of College Board reports point to similar predictive validity across demographic groups. The SAT is correlated with intelligence and as such estimates individual differences. It does not, however, have anything to say about "effective cognitive performance," or what intelligent people do. Nor does it measure non-cognitive traits associated with academic success such as positive attitudes or
conscientiousness Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful, or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to ...
. Psychometricians Thomas R. Coyle and David R. Pillow showed in 2008 that the SAT predicts college GPA even after removing the general factor of intelligence (''g''), with which it is highly correlated. A 2009 study found that SAT or ACT scores and high-school GPAs are strong predictors of cumulative university GPAs. In particular, those with standardized test scores in the 50th percentile or better had a two-thirds chance of having a cumulative university GPA in the top half. A 2010 meta-analysis by researchers from the University of Minnesota offered evidence that standardized admissions tests such as the SAT predicted not only freshman GPA but also overall collegiate GPA. A 2012 study from the same university using a multi-institutional data set revealed that even after controlling for socioeconomic status and high-school GPA, SAT scores were still as capable of predicting freshman GPA among university or college students. A 2019 study with a sample size of around a quarter of a million students suggests that together, SAT scores and high-school GPA offer an excellent predictor of freshman collegiate GPA and second-year retention. In 2018, psychologists Oren R. Shewach, Kyle D. McNeal, Nathan R. Kuncel, and Paul R. Sackett showed that both high-school GPA and SAT scores predict enrollment in advanced collegiate courses, even after controlling for
Advanced Placement Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course ...
credits. Education economist Jesse M. Rothstein indicated in 2005 that high-school average SAT scores were better at predicting freshman university GPAs compared to individual SAT scores. In other words, a student's SAT scores were not as informative with regards to future academic success as his or her high school's average. In contrast, individual high-school GPAs were a better predictor of collegiate success than average high-school GPAs. Furthermore, an admissions officer who failed to take average SAT scores into account would risk overestimating the future performance of a student from a low-scoring school and underestimating that of a student from a high-scoring school. Like other standardized tests like the ACT or the GRE, the SAT is a traditional method for assessing the academic aptitude of students who have had vastly different educational experiences and as such is focused on the common materials that the students could reasonably be expected to have encountered throughout the course of study. As such the mathematics section contains no materials above the
precalculus In mathematics education, precalculus is a course, or a set of courses, that includes algebra and trigonometry at a level which is designed to prepare students for the study of calculus. Schools often distinguish between algebra and trigonometr ...
level, for instance. Psychologist
Raymond Cattell Raymond Bernard Cattell (20 March 1905 – 2 February 1998) was a British-American psychologist, known for his psychometric research into intrapersonal psychological structure.Gillis, J. (2014). ''Psychology's Secret Genius: The Lives and Works ...
referred to this as testing for "historical" rather than "current"
crystallized intelligence The concepts of fluid intelligence (''g''f) and crystallized intelligence (''g''c) were introduced in 1963 by the psychologist Raymond Cattell. According to Cattell's psychometrically-based theory, general intelligence (''g'') is subdivided into ' ...
. Psychologist
Scott Barry Kaufman Scott Barry Kaufman is an American cognitive scientist, author, podcaster, and popular science writer. His writing and research focuses on intelligence, creativity, and human potential. Most media attention has focused on Kaufman's attempt to red ...
further noted that the SAT can only measure a snapshot of a person's performance at a particular moment in time. Educational psychologists Jonathan Wai, David Lubinski, and Camilla Benbow observed that one way to increase the predictive validity of the SAT is by assessing the student's spatial reasoning ability, as the SAT at present does not contain any questions to that effect. Spatial reasoning skills are important for success in STEM. A 2006 study led by psychometrician
Robert Sternberg Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and psychometrician. He is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. Sternberg has a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Stanford University, under advisor ...
found that the ability of SAT scores and high-school GPAs to predict collegiate performance could further be enhanced by additional assessments of analytical, creative, and practical thinking. Experimental psychologist Meredith Frey noted that while advances in education research and neuroscience can help improve the ability to predict scholastic achievement in the future, the SAT remains a valuable tool in the meantime. In a 2014 op-ed for ''The New York Times'', psychologist John D. Mayer called the predictive powers of the SAT "an astonishing achievement" and cautioned against making it and other standardized tests optional.
Research Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...
by psychometricians David Lubinsky, Camilla Benbow, and their colleagues has shown that the SAT could even predict life outcomes beyond university.


Difficulty and relative weight

The SAT rigorously assesses students' mental stamina, memory, speed, accuracy, and capacity for abstract and analytical reasoning. For American universities and colleges, standardized test scores are the most important factor in admissions, second only to high-school GPAs. By international standards, however, the SAT is not that difficult. For example, South Korea's College Scholastic Ability Test ( CSAT) and Finland's
Matriculation Examination A matriculation examination or matriculation exam is a university entrance examination, which is typically held towards the end of secondary school. After passing the examination, a student receives a school leaving certificate recognising academi ...
are both longer, tougher, and count for more towards the admissibility of a student to university. In many countries around the world, exams, including university entrance exams, are the sole deciding factor of admission; school grades are simply irrelevant. In China and India, doing well on the
Gaokao The National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), commonly known as the gaokao (), is a standardized college entrance exam held annually in mainland China. It is required for entrance into almost all higher education institutions at the und ...
or the
IIT-JEE The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) is an engineering entrance assessment conducted for admission to various engineering colleges in India. It is constituted by two different examinations: the JEE-Main and the JEE-Advanced. The Joint Seat ...
, respectively, enhances the
social status Social status is the level of social value a person is considered to possess. More specifically, it refers to the relative level of respect, honour, assumed competence, and deference accorded to people, groups, and organizations in a society. Stat ...
of the students and their families. In an article from 2012, educational psychologist Jonathan Wai argued that the SAT was too easy to be useful to the most competitive of colleges and universities, whose applicants typically had brilliant high-school GPAs and standardized test scores. Admissions officers therefore had the burden of differentiating the top scorers from one another, not knowing whether or not the students' perfect or near-perfect scores truly reflected their scholastic aptitudes. He suggested that the College Board make the SAT more difficult, which would raise the measurement ceiling of the test, allowing the top schools to identify the best and brightest among the applicants. At that time, the College Board was already working on making the SAT tougher. The changes were announced in 2014 and implemented in 2016. After realizing the June 2018 test was easier than usual, the College Board made adjustments resulting in lower-than-expected scores, prompting complaints from the students, though some understood this was to ensure fairness. In its analysis of the incident, the Princeton Review supported the idea of curving grades, but pointed out that the test was incapable of distinguishing students in the 86th percentile (650 points) or higher in mathematics. The Princeton Review also noted that this particular curve was unusual in that it offered no cushion against careless or last-minute mistakes for high-achieving students. The Review posted a similar blog post for the SAT of August 2019, when a similar incident happened and the College Board responded in the same manner, noting, "A student who misses two questions on an easier test should not get as good a score as a student who misses two questions on a hard test. Equating takes care of that issue." It also cautioned students against retaking the SAT immediately, for they might be disappointed again, and recommended that instead, they give themselves some "leeway" before trying again.


Recognition

Outside of the United States, the SAT is considered for university admissions in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and India, among dozens of other countries. About 4,000 institutions of higher learning worldwide accept the SAT, as of early 2022.


Association with general cognitive ability

In a 2000 study, psychometrician Ann M. Gallagher and her colleagues found that only the top students made use of intuitive reasoning in solving problems encountered on the mathematics section of the SAT. Cognitive psychologists Brenda Hannon and Mary McNaughton-Cassill discovered that having a good
working memory Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, ...
, the ability of
knowledge integration Knowledge integration is the process of synthesizing multiple knowledge models (or representations) into a common model (representation). Compared to information integration, which involves merging information having different schemas and represen ...
, and low levels of
test anxiety Test anxiety is a combination of physiological over-arousal, tension and somatic symptoms, along with worry, dread, fear of failure, and catastrophizing, that occur before or during test situations.Zeidner M. (1998). ''Test anxiety: The state of th ...
predicts high performance on the SAT. Frey and Detterman (2004) investigated associations of SAT scores with intelligence test scores. Using an estimate of
general mental ability The ''g'' factor (also known as general intelligence, general mental ability or general intelligence factor) is a construct developed in psychometric investigations of cognitive abilities and human intelligence. It is a variable that summarizes ...
, or ''g'', based on the
Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a multiple choice test, administered by the United States Military Entrance Processing Command, used to determine qualification for enlistment in the United States Armed Forces. It is of ...
, they found SAT scores to be highly correlated with ''g'' (r=.82 in their sample, .857 when adjusted for non-linearity) in their sample taken from a 1979 national probability survey. Additionally, they investigated the correlation between SAT results, using the revised and recentered form of the test, and scores on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, a test of
fluid intelligence The concepts of fluid intelligence (''g''f) and crystallized intelligence (''g''c) were introduced in 1963 by the psychologist Raymond Cattell. According to Cattell's psychometrically-based theory, general intelligence (''g'') is subdivided into ' ...
(reasoning), this time using a non-random sample. They found that the correlation of SAT results with scores on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices was .483, they estimated that this correlation would have been about 0.72 were it not for the restriction of ability range in the sample. They also noted that there appeared to be a ceiling effect on the Raven's scores which may have suppressed the correlation. Beaujean and colleagues (2006) have reached similar conclusions to those reached by Frey and Detterman. Because the SAT is strongly correlated with general intelligence, it can be used as a proxy to measure intelligence, especially when the time-consuming traditional methods of assessment are unavailable. Psychometrician
Linda Gottfredson Linda Susanne Gottfredson (née Howarth; born 1947) is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of I ...
noted that the SAT is effective at identifying
intellectually gifted Intellectual giftedness is an Intelligence, intellectual ability significantly higher than average. It is a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into a ...
college-bound students. For decades many critics have accused designers of the verbal SAT of cultural bias as an explanation for the disparity in scores between poorer and wealthier test-takers, with the biggest critics coming from the University of California system. A famous example of this perceived bias in the SAT I was the
oarsman Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically atta ...
regatta Boat racing is a sport in which boats, or other types of watercraft, race on water. Boat racing powered by oars is recorded as having occurred in ancient Egypt, and it is likely that people have engaged in races involving boats and other wate ...
analogy question, which is no longer part of the exam. The object of the question was to find the pair of terms that had the relationship most similar to the relationship between "runner" and "marathon". The correct answer was "oarsman" and "regatta". The choice of the correct answer was thought to have presupposed students' familiarity with
rowing Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically atta ...
, a sport popular with the wealthy. However, for psychometricians, analogy questions are a useful tool to gauge the mental abilities of students, for, even if the meaning of two words are unclear, a student with sufficiently strong analytical thinking skills should still be able to identify their relationships. Analogy questions were removed in 2005. In their place are questions that provide more contextual information should the students be ignorant of the relevant definition of a word, making it easier for them to guess the correct answer.


Association with college or university majors and rankings

In 2010, physicists Stephen Hsu and James Schombert of the University of Oregon examined five years of student records at their school and discovered that the academic standing of students majoring in mathematics or physics (but not biology, English, sociology, or history) was strongly dependent on SAT mathematics scores. Students with an SAT mathematics scores below 600 were highly unlikely to excel as a mathematics or physics major. Nevertheless, they found no such patterns between the SAT verbal, or combined SAT verbal and mathematics and the other aforementioned subjects. In 2015, educational psychologist Jonathan Wai of Duke University analyzed average test scores from the
Army General Classification Test The Army General Classification Test (AGCT) has a long history that runs parallel with research and means for attempting the assessment of intelligence or other abilities. World War I and World War II created the need for this type of testing a ...
in 1946 (10,000 students), the Selective Service College Qualification Test in 1952 (38,420),
Project Talent Project Talent is a national longitudinal study that first surveyed over 440,000 American high school students in 1960. At the time, it was the largest and most comprehensive study of high school students ever conducted in the United States. Desi ...
in the early 1970s (400,000), the
Graduate Record Examination The Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) is a standardized test that is an admissions requirement for many graduate schools in the United States and Canada and a few other countries. The GRE is owned and administered by Educational Testing Servi ...
between 2002 and 2005 (over 1.2 million), and the SAT Math and Verbal in 2014 (1.6 million). Wai identified one consistent pattern: those with the highest test scores tended to pick the physical sciences and engineering as their majors while those with the lowest were more likely to choose education and agriculture. (See figure below.)A 2020 paper by Laura H. Gunn and her colleagues examining data from 1389 institutions across the United States unveiled strong positive correlations between the average SAT percentiles of incoming students and the shares of graduates majoring in STEM and the social sciences. On the other hand, they found negative correlations between the former and the shares of graduates in psychology, theology, law enforcement, recreation and fitness. Various researchers have established that average SAT or ACT scores and college ranking in the ''U.S. News & World Report'' are highly correlated, almost 0.9. Between the 1980s and the 2010s, the U.S. population grew while universities and colleges did not expand their capacities as substantially. As a result, admissions rates fell considerably, meaning it has become more difficult to get admitted to a school whose alumni include one's parents. On top of that, high-scoring students nowadays are much more likely to leave their hometowns in pursuit of higher education at prestigious institutions. Consequently, standardized tests, such as the SAT, are a more reliable measure of selectivity than admissions rates. Still, when Michael J. Petrilli and Pedro Enamorado analyzed the SAT composite scores (math and verbal) of incoming freshman classes of 1985 and 2016 of the top universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States, they found that the median scores of new students increased by 93 points for their sample, from 1216 to 1309. In particular, fourteen institutions saw an increase of at least 150 points, including the University of Notre-Dame (from 1290 to 1440, or 150 points) and Elon College (from 952 to 1192, or 240 points).


Association with types of schooling

While there seems to be evidence that private schools tend to produce students who do better on standardized tests such as the ACT or the SAT, Keven Duncan and Jonathan Sandy showed, using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, that when student characteristics, such as age,
race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
, and
sex Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones ( ova, of ...
(7%),
family background Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
(45%), school quality (26%), and other factors were taken into account, the advantage of private schools diminished by 78%. The researchers concluded that students attending private schools already had the attributes associated with high scores on their own.


Association with educational and societal standings and outcomes

File:1995-SAT-Income2.png File:1995-SAT-Education2.png Research from the University of California system published in 2001 analyzing data of their undergraduates between Fall 1996 through Fall 1999, inclusive, found that the SAT II was the single best predictor of collegiate success in the sense of freshman GPA, followed by high-school GPA, and finally the SAT I. After controlling for family income and parental education, the already low ability of the SAT to measure aptitude and college readiness fell sharply while the more substantial aptitude and college readiness measuring abilities of high school GPA and the SAT II each remained undiminished (and even slightly increased). The University of California system required both the SAT I and the SAT II from applicants to the UC system during the four academic years of the study. This analysis is heavily publicized but is contradicted by many studies. There is evidence that the SAT is correlated with societal and educational outcomes, including finishing a four-year university program. A 2012 paper from psychologists at the University of Minnesota analyzing multi-institutional data sets suggested that the SAT maintained its ability to predict collegiate performance even after controlling for socioeconomic status (as measured by the combination of parental educational attainment and income) and high-school GPA. This means that SAT scores were not merely a proxy for measuring socioeconomic status, the researchers concluded. This finding has been replicated and shown to hold across racial or ethnic groups and for both sexes. Moreover, the Minnesota researchers found that the socioeconomic status distributions of the student bodies of the schools examined reflected those of their respective applicant pools. Because of what it measures, a person's SAT scores cannot be separated from their socioeconomic background. In 2007,
Rebecca Zwick Rebecca Zwick is an American statistician and researcher in educational assessment and psychometrics. She is a professor emeritus in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of a book ...
and Jennifer Greif Green observed that a typical analysis did not take into account that heterogeneity of the high schools attended by the students in terms of not just the socioeconomic statuses of the student bodies but also the standards of grading. Zwick and Greif Green proceeded to show that when these were accounted for, the correlation between family socioeconomic status and classroom grades and rank increased whereas that between socioeconomic status and SAT scores fell. They concluded that school grades and SAT scores were similarly associated with family income. According to the College Board, in 2019, 56% of the test takers had parents with a university degree, 27% parents with no more than a high-school diploma, and about 9% who did not graduate from high school. (8% did not respond to the question.)


Association with family structures

One of the proposed partial explanations for the gap between Asian- and European-American students in educational achievement, as measured for example by the SAT, is the general tendency of Asians to come from stable two-parent households. In their 2018 analysis of data from the
National Longitudinal Surveys The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) are a set of surveys sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor. These surveys have gathered information at multiple points in time on the labor market experiences an ...
of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of t ...
, economists Adam Blandin, Christopher Herrington, and Aaron Steelman concluded that family structure played an important role in determining educational outcomes in general and SAT scores in particular. Families with only one parent who has no degrees were designated 1L, with two parents but no degrees 2L, and two parents with at least one degree between them 2H. Children from 2H families held a significant advantage of those from 1L families, and this gap grew between 1990 and 2010. Because the median SAT composite scores (verbal and mathematics) for 2H families grew by 20 points while those of 1L families fell by one point, the gap between them increased by 21 points, or a fifth of one standard deviation. Speaking to ''The'' ''Wall Street Journal'', family sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox stated, "In the absence of SAT scores, which can pinpoint kids from difficult family backgrounds with great academic potential, family stability is likely to loom even larger in determining who makes it past the college finish line in California
hose public university system decided to stop requiring SAT and ACT scores for admissions in 2020 A hose is a flexible hollow tube designed to carry fluids from one location to another. Hoses are also sometimes called ''pipes'' (the word ''pipe'' usually refers to a rigid tube, whereas a hose is usually a flexible one), or more generally ' ...
"


Sex differences


In performance

In 2013, the American College Testing Board released a report stating that boys outperformed girls on the mathematics section of the test, a significant gap that has persisted for over 35 years. As of 2015, boys on average earned 32 points more than girls on the SAT mathematics section. Among those scoring in the 700-800 range, the male-to-female ratio was 1.6:1. In 2014, psychologist Stephen Ceci and his collaborators found boys did better than girls across the percentiles. For example, a girl scoring in the top 10% of her sex would only be in the top 20% among the boys. In 2010, psychologist Jonathan Wai and his colleagues showed, by analyzing data from three decades involving 1.6 million intellectually gifted seventh graders from the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP), that in the 1980s the gender gap in the mathematics section of the SAT among students scoring in the top 0.01% was 13.5:1 in favor of boys but dropped to 3.8:1 by the 1990s. The dramatic sex ratio from the 1980s replicates a different study using a sample from Johns Hopkins University. This ratio is similar to that observed for the ACT mathematics and science scores between the early 1990s and the late 2000s. It remained largely unaltered at the end of the 2000s. Sex differences in SAT mathematics scores began making themselves apparent at the level of 400 points and above. Some researchers point to evidence in support of greater male variability in verbal and quantitative reasoning skills. Greater male variability has been found in body weight, height, and cognitive abilities across cultures, leading to a larger number of males in the lowest and highest distributions of testing. Consequently, a higher number of males are found in both the upper and lower extremes of the performance distributions of the mathematics sections of standardized tests such as the SAT, resulting in the observed gender discrepancy. Paradoxically, this is at odds with the tendency of girls to have higher classroom scores than boys, proving that they do not lack scholastic aptitude. However, boys tend to do better on standardized test questions not directly related to the curriculum. On the other hand, Wai and his colleagues found that both sexes in the top 5% appeared to be more or less at parity when it comes to the verbal section of the SAT, though girls have gained a slight but noticeable edge over boys starting in the mid-1980s. Psychologist David Lubinski, who conducted longitudinal studies of seventh graders who scored exceptionally high on the SAT, found a similar result. Girls generally had better verbal reasoning skills and boys mathematical skills. This reflects other research on the cognitive ability of the general population rather than just the 95th percentile and up. Although aspects of testing such as stereotype threat are a concern, research on the predictive validity of the SAT has demonstrated that it tends to be a more accurate predictor of female GPA in university as compared to male GPA.


In strategizing

Mathematical problems on the SAT can be broadly categorized into two groups: conventional and unconventional. Conventional problems can be handled routinely via familiar formulas or algorithms while unconventional ones require more creative thought in order to make unusual use of familiar methods of solution or to come up with the specific insights necessary for solving those problems. In 2000, ETS psychometrician Ann M. Gallagher and her colleagues analyzed how students handled disclosed SAT mathematics questions in self-reports. They found that for both sexes, the most favored approach was to use formulas or algorithms learned in class. When that failed, however, males were more likely than females to identify the suitable methods of solution. Previous research suggested that males were more likely to explore unusual paths to solution whereas females tended to stick to what they had learned in class and that females were more likely to identify the appropriate approaches if such required nothing more than mastery of classroom materials.


In confidence

Older versions of the SAT did ask students how confident they were in their mathematical aptitude and verbal reasoning ability, specifically, whether or not they believed they were in the top 10%. Devin G. Pope analyzed data of over four million test takers from the late 1990s to the early 2000s and found that high scorers were more likely to be confident they were in the top 10%, with the top scorers reporting the highest levels of confidence. But there were some noticeable gaps between the sexes. Men tended to be much more confident in their mathematical aptitude than women. For example, among those who scored 700 on the mathematics section, 67% of men answered they believed they were in the top 10% whereas only 56% of women did the same. Women, on the other hand, were slightly more confident in their verbal reasoning ability than men.


In glucose metabolism

Cognitive neuroscientists Richard Haier and
Camilla Persson Benbow Camilla Persson Benbow is a Swedish-born (Scania) American educational psychologist and a university professor. She studies the education of intellectually gifted students. Biography Camilla Benbow is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education ...
employed positron emission tomography (
PET A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive appearances, intelligence, ...
) scans to investigate the rate of
glucose metabolism Carbohydrate metabolism is the whole of the biochemical processes responsible for the metabolic formation, breakdown, and interconversion of carbohydrates in living organisms. Carbohydrates are central to many essential metabolic pathways. Pla ...
among students who have taken the SAT. They found that among men, those with higher SAT mathematics scores exhibited higher rates of glucose metabolism in the
temporal lobe The temporal lobe is one of the four Lobes of the brain, major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain. The temporal lobe ...
s than those with lower scores, contradicting the brain-efficiency hypothesis. This trend, however, was not found among women, for whom the researchers could not find any cortical regions associated with mathematical reasoning. Both sexes scored the same on average in their sample and had the same rates of cortical glucose metabolism overall. According to Haier and Benbow, this is evidence for the structural differences of the brain between the sexes.


Association with race and ethnicity

A 2001
meta-analysis A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
of the results of 6,246,729 participants tested for cognitive ability or aptitude found a difference in average scores between black and white students of around 1.0
standard deviation In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, while ...
, with comparable results for the SAT (2.4 million test takers). Similarly, on average, Hispanic and Amerindian students perform on the order of one standard deviation lower on the SAT than white and Asian students. Mathematics appears to be the more difficult part of the exam. In 1996, the black-white gap in the mathematics section was 0.91 standard deviations, but by 2020, it fell to 0.79. In 2013, Asian Americans as a group scored 0.38 standard deviations higher than whites in the mathematics section. Some researchers believe that the difference in scores is closely related to the overall achievement gap in American society between students of different racial groups. This gap may be explainable in part by the fact that students of disadvantaged racial groups tend to go to schools that provide lower educational quality. This view is supported by evidence that the black-white gap is higher in cities and neighborhoods that are more racially segregated. Other research cites poorer minority proficiency in key coursework relevant to the SAT (English and math), as well as peer pressure against students who try to focus on their schoolwork ("
acting white In the United States, acting white is a pejorative term, usually applied to black people, which refers to a person's perceived betrayal of their culture by assuming the social expectations of white society.
"). Cultural issues are also evident among black students in wealthier households, with high achieving parents.
John Ogbu John Uzo Ogbu (May 9, 1939 – August 20, 2003) was a Nigerian-American anthropologist and professor known for his theories on observed phenomena involving race and intelligence, especially how race and ethnic differences played out in educational ...
, a Nigerian-American professor of anthropology, concluded that instead of looking to their parents as role models, black youth chose other models like rappers and did not make an effort to be good students. One set of studies has reported differential item functioning, namely, that some test questions function differently based on the racial group of the test taker, reflecting differences in ability to understand certain test questions or to acquire the knowledge required to answer them between groups. In 2003, Freedle published data showing that black students have had a slight advantage on the verbal questions that are labeled as difficult on the SAT, whereas white and Asian students tended to have a slight advantage on questions labeled as easy. Freedle argued that these findings suggest that "easy" test items use vocabulary that is easier to understand for white middle class students than for minorities, who often use a different language in the home environment, whereas the difficult items use complex language learned only through lectures and textbooks, giving both student groups equal opportunities to acquiring it. The study was severely criticized by the ETS board, but the findings were replicated in a subsequent study by Santelices and Wilson in 2010. There is no evidence that SAT scores systematically underestimate future performance of minority students. However, the predictive validity of the SAT has been shown to depend on the dominant ethnic and racial composition of the college. Some studies have also shown that African-American students under-perform in college relative to their white peers with the same SAT scores; researchers have argued that this is likely because white students tend to benefit from social advantages outside of the educational environment (for example, high parental involvement in their education, inclusion in campus academic activities, positive bias from same-race teachers and peers) which result in better grades.Jencks, C. (1998). Racial bias in testing. The Black-White test score gap, 55, 84. Christopher Jencks concludes that as a group, African Americans have been harmed by the introduction of standardized entrance exams such as the SAT. This, according to him, is not because the tests themselves are flawed, but because of labeling bias and selection bias; the tests measure the skills that African Americans are less likely to develop in their socialization, rather than the skills they are more likely to develop. Furthermore, standardized entrance exams are often labeled as tests of general ability, rather than of certain aspects of ability. Thus, a situation is produced in which African-American ability is consistently underestimated within the education and workplace environments, contributing in turn to selection bias against them which exacerbates underachievement. Among the major racial or ethnic groups of the United States, gaps in SAT mathematics scores are the greatest at the tails, with Hispanic and Latino Americans being the most likely to score at the lowest range and Asian Americans the highest. In addition, there is some evidence suggesting that if the test contains more questions of both the easy and difficult varieties, which would increase the variability of the scores, the gaps would be even wider. Given the distribution for Asians, for example, many could score higher than 800 if the test allowed them to. (See figure below.) 2020 was the year in which education worldwide was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and indeed, the performance of students in the United States on standardized tests, such as the SAT, suffered. Yet the gaps persisted. According to the College Board, in 2020, while 83% of Asian students met the benchmark of college readiness in reading and writing and 80% in mathematics, only 44% and 21% of black students did those respective categories. Among whites, 79% met the benchmark for reading and writing and 59% did mathematics. For Hispanics and Latinos, the numbers were 53% and 30%, respectively. (See figure below.)


Test-taking population

By analyzing data from the National Center for Education Statistics, economists Ember Smith and Richard Reeves of the
Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...
deduced that the number of students taking the SAT increased at a rate faster than population and high-school graduation growth rates between 2000 and 2020. The increase was especially pronounced among Hispanics and Latinos. Even among whites, whose number of high-school graduates was shrinking, the number of SAT takers rose. In 2015, for example, 1.7 million students took the SAT, up from 1.6 million in 2013. But in 2019, a record-breaking 2.2 million students took the exam, compared to 2.1 million in 2018, another record-breaking year. The rise in the number of students taking the SAT was due in part to many school districts offering to administer the SAT during school days often at no further costs to the students. However, in 2021, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the optional status of the SAT at many colleges and universities, only 1.5 million students took the test. But this number went up to 1.7 million in 2022, as ambitious students took the test in order to make themselves stand out from the competition. Psychologists
Jean Twenge Jean Marie Twenge (born August 24, 1971) is an American psychologist researching generational differences, including work values, life goals, and speed of development. She is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, author, consul ...
, W. Keith Campbell, and Ryne A. Sherman analyzed vocabulary test scores on the U.S.
General Social Survey The General Social Survey (GSS) is a sociological survey created and regularly collected since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. It is funded by the National Science Foundation. The GSS collects informati ...
(n = 29,912) and found that after correcting for education, the use of sophisticated vocabulary has declined between the mid-1970s and the mid-2010s across all levels of education, from below high school to graduate school. However, they cautioned against the use of SAT verbal scores to track the decline for while the College Board reported that SAT verbal scores had been decreasing, these scores were an imperfect measure of the vocabulary level of the nation as a whole because the test-taking demographic has changed and because more students took the SAT in the 2010s than in the 1970s, meaning there were more with limited ability who took it. However, as the frequency of reading for pleasure and the level of reading comprehension among American high-school students continue to decline, students who take the SAT might struggle to do well, even if reforms have been introduced to shorten the duration of the test and to reduce the number of questions associated with a given passage in the verbal portion of the test.


Use in non-collegiate contexts


By high-IQ societies

Certain
high IQ societies A high-IQ society is an organization that limits its membership to people who have attained a specified score on an IQ test, usually in the top two percent of the population (98th percentile) or above. These may also be referred to as genius socie ...
, like Mensa,
Intertel Intertel (previously the International Legion of Intelligence) is a high-IQ society founded in 1966, that is open to those who have scored at or above the 99th percentile (top 1%) on one of various standardized tests of intelligence. It has been ...
, the
Prometheus Society The Prometheus Society is a high IQ society, similar to Mensa International, but much more restrictive. The entry criterion, achievable by a number of tests, is designed to be passable by 1 in 30,000 of the population, while Mensa entry is achiev ...
and the
Triple Nine Society The Triple Nine Society (TNS) is an international high IQ society for adults whose score on a standardized test demonstrates an IQ at or above the 99.9th percentile of the human population. The society recognizes scores from over 20 different ...
, use scores from certain years as one of their admission tests. For instance, Intertel accepts scores (verbal and math combined) of at least 1300 on tests taken through January 1994; the Triple Nine Society accepts scores of 1450 or greater on SAT tests taken before April 1995, and scores of at least 1520 on tests taken between April 1995 and February 2005. Mensa accepts qualifying SAT scores earned on or before January 31, 1994.


By researchers

Because it is strongly correlated with general intelligence, the SAT has often been used as a proxy to measure intelligence by researchers, especially since 2004. In particular, scientists studying mathematically gifted individuals have been using the mathematics section of the SAT to identify subjects for their research. A growing body of research indicates that SAT scores can predict individual success decades into the future, for example in terms of income and occupational achievements. A longitudinal study published in 2005 by educational psychologists Jonathan Wai, David Lubinski, and Camilla Benbow suggests that among the intellectually precocious (the top 1%), those with higher scores in the mathematics section of the SAT at the age of 12 were more likely to earn a PhD in the
STEM Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
fields, to have a publication, to register a patent, or to secure university tenure. Wai further showed that an individual's academic ability, as measured by the average SAT or ACT scores of the institution attended, predicted individual differences in income, even among the richest people of all, and being a member of the 'American elite', namely Fortune 500 CEOs, billionaires, federal judges, and members of Congress. Wai concluded that the American elite was also the cognitive elite. Gregory Park, Lubinski, and Benbow gave statistical evidence that intellectually gifted adolescents, as identified by SAT scores, could be expected to accomplish great feats of creativity in the future, both in the arts and in STEM. The SAT is sometimes given to students at age 12 or 13 by organizations such as the
Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) is a prospective longitudinal survey study of persons (mostly in the United States) identified by scores of 700 or higher on a section of the SAT Reasoning Test before age 13 years. It is one of th ...
(SMPY), Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and the Duke University
Talent Identification Program The Duke University Talent Identification Program (commonly referred to as "Duke TIP") was a gifted education program based at Duke University. Founded in 1980 as one of the first pre-collegiate studies programs offered by an American university, ...
(TIP) to select, study, and mentor students of exceptional ability, that is, those in the top one percent. Among SMPY participants, those within the top quartile, as indicated by the SAT composite score (mathematics and verbal), were markedly more likely to have a doctoral degree, to have at least one publication in STEM, to earn income in the 95th percentile, to have at least one literary publication, or to register at least one patent than those in the bottom quartile. Duke TIP participants generally picked career tracks in STEM should they be stronger in mathematics, as indicated by SAT mathematics scores, or the humanities if they possessed greater verbal ability, as indicated by SAT verbal scores. For comparison, the bottom SMPY quartile is five times more likely than the average American to have a patent. Meanwhile, as of 2016, the shares doctorates among SMPY participants was 44% and Duke TIP 37%, compared to two percent among the general U.S. population. Consequently, the notion that beyond a certain point, differences in cognitive ability as measured by standardized tests such as the SAT cease to matter is gainsaid by the evidence. In the 2010 paper which showed that the sex gap in SAT mathematics scores had dropped dramatically between the early 1980s and the early 1990s but had persisted for the next two decades or so, Wai and his colleagues argued that "sex differences in abilities in the extreme right tail should not be dismissed as no longer part of the explanation for the dearth of women in math-intensive fields of science."


By employers

Cognitive ability is correlated with job training outcomes and job performance. As such, some employers rely on SAT scores to assess the suitability of a prospective recruit, especially if the person has limited work experience. There is nothing new about this practice. Major companies and corporations have spent princely sums on learning how to avoid hiring errors and have decided that standardized test scores are a valuable tool in deciding whether or not a person is fit for the job. In some cases, a company might need to hire someone to handle proprietary materials of its own making, such as computer software. But since the ability to work with such materials cannot be assessed via external certification, it makes sense for such a firm to rely on something that is a proxy of measuring general intelligence. In other cases, a firm may not care about academic background but needs to assess a prospective recruit's quantitative reasoning ability, and what makes standardized test scores necessary. Several companies, especially those considered to be the most prestigious in industries such as
investment banking Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated wit ...
and
management consulting Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultant ...
such as
Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
and
McKinsey McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...
, have been reported to ask prospective job candidates about their SAT scores. According to the ''Wall Street Journal'', the scores are used similarly to how they are in college admissions, in that companies claim they provide insight into the intellectual capabilities and problem-solving skills of an individual. Nevertheless, some other top employers, such as
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
, have eschewed the use of SAT or other standardized test scores unless the potential employee is a recent graduate because for their purposes, these scores "don't predict anything." Educational psychologist Jonathan Wai suggested this might be due to the inability of the SAT to differentiate the intellectual capacities of those at the extreme right end of the distribution of intelligence. Wai told ''The New York Times'', "Today the SAT is actually too easy, and that's why Google doesn't see a correlation. Every single person they get through the door is a super-high scorer."


Perception


Math–verbal achievement gap

In 2002, ''New York Times'' columnist Richard Rothstein argued that the U.S. math averages on the SAT and ACT continued their decade-long rise over national verbal averages on the tests while the averages verbal portions on the same tests were floundering.


Optional SAT

In the 1960s and 1970s there was a movement to drop achievement scores. After a period of time, the countries, states and provinces that reintroduced them agreed that academic standards had dropped, students had studied less, and had taken their studying less seriously. They reintroduced the tests after studies and research concluded that the high-stakes tests produced benefits that outweighed the costs. In a 2001 speech to the
American Council on Education The American Council on Education (ACE) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) U.S. higher education association established in 1918. ACE's members are the leaders of approximately 1,700 accredited, degree-granting colleges and universities and higher education ...
,
Richard C. Atkinson Richard Chatham Atkinson (born March 19, 1929) is an American professor of psychology and cognitive science and an academic administrator. He is president emeritus of the University of California system, former chancellor of the University of Cali ...
, the president of the University of California, urged the dropping admissions tests such as the SAT I but not achievement tests such as the SAT II as a college admissions requirement. Atkinson's critique of the predictive validity and powers of the SAT has been contested by the University of California academic senate. In April 2020, the academic senate, which consisted of faculty members, voted 51–0 to restore the requirement of standardized test scores. However, the governing board overruled the senate. Because of the size of the Californian population, this decision might have an impact on U.S. higher education at large; schools looking to admit Californian students could have harder time. During the 2010s, over 1,230 American universities and colleges opted to stop requiring the SAT and the ACT for admissions, according to
FairTest The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, also known as FairTest, is an American educational organization that addresses issues related to fairness and accuracy in student test taking and scoring. History FairTest was founded in 1985 by leaders ...
, an activist group opposing standardized entrance exams. Most, however, were small colleges, with the notable exceptions of the University of California system and the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. Also on the list are institutions catering to niche students, such as religious colleges, arts music conservatories, or nursing schools, and the majority of institutions in the Northeastern United States. On one hand, making the SAT and the ACT optional for admissions enables schools to attract a larger pool of applicants of a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. On the other hand, letters of recommendation are not a good indicator of collegiate performance, and
grade inflation Grade inflation (also known as grading leniency) is the awarding of higher grades than students deserve, which yields a higher average grade given to students. The term is also used to describe the tendency to award progressively higher academic g ...
is a genuine problem. If standardized tests were taken out of the picture, school grades would become more important, thereby incentivizing grade inflation. In fact, grades in American high schools have been inflating by noticeable amounts due to pressure from parents, creating an apparent oversupply of high achievers that makes actual high-performing students struggle to stand out, especially if they are from low-income families. Schools that made the SAT optional therefore lose an objective measure of academic aptitude and readiness, and they will have to formulate a new methodology for admissions or to develop their own entrance exams. Given that the selectivity of a school a student applies to is correlated with the resources of his or her high school—measured in terms of the availability of rigorous courses, such as AP classes, and the socioeconomic statuses of the student body—, making the SAT optional might exacerbate social inequities. Furthermore, since the costs of attending institutions of higher learning in the United States are high, eliminating the SAT requirement could make said institutions more likely to admit under-performing students, who might have to be removed for their low academic standing and who might be saddled with debt after attending. Another criticism of making the SAT optional is that subjective measures of an applicant's suitability, such as application essays, could become more important, making it easier for the rich to gain admissions at the expense of the poor because their school counselors are more capable of writing good letters of recommendation and they could afford hire external help to boost their applications. It was due to these concerns that the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT) decided to reinstate its SAT requirement in 2022. Despite the fallout from
Operation Varsity Blues Varsity Blues may refer to: * Varsity Blues (film), ''Varsity Blues'' (film), a 1999 film starring James Van Der Beek * Varsity Blues (EP), ''Varsity Blues'' (EP), a 2002 EP by Murs * Toronto Varsity Blues, the sports teams of the University of Tor ...
, which found many wealthy parents illegally intervening to raise their children's standardized test scores, the SAT and the ACT remain popular among American parents and college-bound seniors, who are skeptical of the process of "
holistic Holism () is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical, biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. The term "holism" was coined by Jan Smuts in his 1926 book ''Holism and Evolution''."holism, n." OED Onl ...
admissions" because they think is rather vague and uncertain, as schools try to access characteristics not easily discerned via a number, hence the growth in the number of test takers attempting to make themselves more competitive even if this parallels an increase in the number of schools declaring it optional. Holistic admissions notwithstanding, when merit-based scholarships are considered, standardized test scores might be the tiebreakers, as these are highly competitive. Scholarships and financial aid could help students and their parents significantly cut the cost of higher education, especially in times of economic hardship. Moreover, the most selective of schools might have no better options than using standardized test scores in order to quickly prune the number of applications worth considering, for holistic admissions consume valuable time and other resources. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, around 1,600 institutions decided to waive the requirement of the SAT or the ACT for admissions because it was challenging both to administer and to take these tests, resulting in many cancellations. Some schools chose to make them optional on a temporary basis only, either for just one year, as in the case of
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, or three, like the
College of William & Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III ...
. Others dropped the requirement completely. Some schools extended their moratorium on standardized entrance exams in 2021. This did not stop highly ambitious students from taking them, however, as many parents and teenagers were skeptical of the "optional" status of university entrance exams and wanted to make their applications more likely to catch the attention of admission officers. This led to complaints of registration sites crashing in the summer of 2020. On the other hand, the number of students applying to the more competitive of schools that had made SAT and ACT scores optional increased dramatically because the students thought they stood a chance. Ivy League institutions saw double-digit increases in the number of applications, as high as 51% in the case of
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, while their admission rates, already in the single digits, fell, e.g. from 4.9% in 2020 to just 3.4% in 2021 at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. At the same time, interest in lower-status schools that did the same thing dropped precipitously. In all, 44% of students who used the
Common Application The Common Application (more commonly known as the Common App) is an undergraduate college admission application that applicants may use to apply to over 1,000 member colleges and universities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as we ...
—accepted by over 900 colleges and universities as of 2021—submitted SAT or ACT scores in 2020–21, down from 77% in 2019–20. Those who did submit their test scores tended to hail from high-income families, to have at least one university-educated parent, and to be white or Asian.


Writing section

In 2005,
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
Writing Director
Les Perelman Leslie Cooper Perelman is an American scholar and authority on writing assessment. He is a critic of automated essay scoring (AES), and influenced the College Board's decision to terminate the Writing Section of the SAT. Perelman is currently ...
plotted essay length versus essay score on the new SAT from released essays and found a high correlation between them. After studying over 50 graded essays, he found that longer essays consistently produced higher scores. In fact, he argues that by simply gauging the length of an essay without reading it, the given score of an essay could likely be determined correctly over 90% of the time. He also discovered that several of these essays were full of factual errors; the College Board does not claim to grade for factual accuracy. Perelman, along with the National Council of Teachers of English, also criticized the 25-minute writing section of the test for damaging standards of writing teaching in the classroom. They say that writing teachers training their students for the SAT will not focus on revision, depth, accuracy, but will instead produce long, formulaic, and wordy pieces. "You're getting teachers to train students to be bad writers", concluded Perelman. On January 19, 2021, the College Board announced that the SAT would no longer offer the optional essay section after the June 2021 administration.


History

The College Board, the
non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
that owns the SAT, was organized at the beginning of the 20th century to provide uniform entrance exams for its member colleges, whose matriculating students often came from boarding and private day schools found in the Northeastern United States. The exams were essay-based, graded by hand, and required several days for the student to take them. By the early 1920s, the increasing interest in
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
tests as a means of selection convinced the College Board to form a commission to produce such a test for college admission purposes. The leader of the commission was
Carl Brigham Carl Campbell Brigham (May 4, 1890 – January 24, 1943) was an American eugenicist and professor of psychology at Princeton University's Department of Psychology and a pioneer in the field of psychometrics. He sat on the advisory council of t ...
, a psychologist at Princeton University, who originally saw the value of these types of tests through the lens of
eugenic Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
thought. In June, 1926, the first SAT, then known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, was administered to about 8,000 students, many of whom were applying to
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
and
Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
. In 1934, James Conant and
Henry Chauncey Henry Chauncey (February 9, 1905 – December 3, 2002) was a founder and the first president of the Educational Testing Service (ETS). He graduated from Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy L ...
used the SAT as a means to identify recipients, besides those from the traditional northeastern private schools, for scholarships to
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. By 1942, the College Board suspended the use of the essay exams, replacing them with the SAT, due in part to the success of Harvard's SAT program as well as because of the contraints from the onset of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. At this time, the SAT was standardized so that a test score received by a student in one year could be directly compared to a score received by a student in another year. Test scores ranged from 200 to 800 on each of two test sections (verbal and math) and the same reference group of students was used to standardize the SAT until 1995. After the war, due to several factors including the formation of the
Educational Testing Service Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address. ETS develops var ...
, the use of the SAT increased rapidly: by 1951, about 80,000 SATs were taken, rising to about 1.5 million in 1971. During this time, changes made to the content of the SAT were relatively minor, and included the introduction of sentence completion questions and "quantitative comparison" math questions as well as changes in the timing of the test. In 1994, however, the SAT was substantially changed in an attempt to make the test more closely reflect the work done by students in school and the skills that they would need in college. Among other changes, antonym questions were removed from the verbal section, and
free response question Free response questions or essay questions are a type of open-ended question commonly used in schools to test students' learning, as well as in entrance exams and sometimes as part of job application or screening processes. Description Free respon ...
s were added to the math section along with the use of calculators. In 1995, after nearly forty years of declining scores, the SAT was recalibrated by the addition of approximately 100 points to each score to compensate for the decline in what constituted an average score. In 2005, the SAT was changed again, in part due to criticism of the test by the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
system, which said that the test was not closely enough aligned to high school curricula. Along with the elimination of
analogies Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...
from the verbal section and quantitative comparison items from the math section, a new writing section with an essay was added. The changes introduced an additional section score, increasing the maximum SAT score to 2400. In early 2016, the SAT would change again in the interest of alignment with typical high school curricula. The changes included making the essay optional (and returning the maximum score to 1600), changing all multiple-choice questions from having five answer options to four, and the removal of penalty for wrong answers (rights-only scoring). The essay was completely removed from the SAT by mid-2021, in the interest of reducing demands on students in the context of the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. In January 2022, College Board announced that the SAT would be administered digitally to all test takers by 2024. The digital format of the test is expected to be shorter than the current paper-based test and will allow scores to be determined in a matter of days rather than weeks.


Name changes

The SAT has been renamed several times since its introduction in 1926. It was originally known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In 1990, a commission set up by the College Board to review the proposed changes to the SAT program recommended that the meaning of the
initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
SAT be changed to "Scholastic Assessment Test" because a "test that integrates measures of achievement as well as developed ability can no longer be accurately described as a test of aptitude". In 1993, the College Board changed the name of the test to SAT I: Reasoning Test; at the same time, the name of the
Achievement Tests Achievement may refer to: * Achievement (heraldry) *Achievement (horse), a racehorse * Achievement (video gaming), a meta-goal defined outside of a game's parameters See also * Achievement test for student assessment * Achiever, a personality t ...
was changed to SAT II: Subject Tests. The Reasoning Test and Subject Tests were to be collectively known as the Scholastic Assessment Tests. According to the president of the College Board at the time, the name change was meant "to correct the impression among some people that the SAT measures something that is innate and impervious to change regardless of effort or instruction." The new SAT debuted in March 1994, and was referred to as the Scholastic Assessment Test by major news organizations. However, in 1997, the College Board announced that the SAT could not properly be called the Scholastic Assessment Test, and that the letters SAT did not stand for anything. In 2004, the Roman numeral in SAT I: Reasoning Test was dropped, making SAT Reasoning Test the name of the SAT. The "Reasoning Test" portion of the name was eliminated following the exam's 2016 redesign; it is now simply called the SAT.


Reuse of old SAT exams

The College Board has been accused of completely reusing old SAT papers previously given in the United States. The recycling of questions from previous exams has been exploited to allow for cheating on exams and impugned the validity of some students' test scores, according to college officials. Test preparation companies in Asia have been found to provide test questions to students within hours of a new SAT exam's administration. On August 25, 2018, the SAT test given in America was discovered to be a recycled October 2017 international SAT test given in China. The leaked PDF file was on the internet before the August 25, 2018 exam.


See also

*
ACT (test) The ACT (; originally an abbreviation of American College Testing) Name changed in 1996. is a standardized test used for University and college admissions, college admissions in the Education in the United States, United States. It is current ...
, a college entrance exam, competitor to the SAT *
College admissions in the United States College admissions in the United States refers to the process of applying for entrance to institutions of higher education for undergraduate study at one of the nation's colleges or universities.Robin Mamlet and Christine VanDeVelde, College ...
*
List of admissions tests A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations * List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America * SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
*
PSAT/NMSQT The Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) is a standardized test administered by the College Board and cosponsored by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) in the United States. In the 2018-2019 s ...
*
SAT Subject Tests SAT Subject Tests were 20 multiple-choice standardized tests given by the College Board on individual subjects, typically taken to improve a student's credentials for college admissions in the United States. On January 19, 2021, the College Board ...


Notes


References


Further reading

* * * * (and others) * * * * *


External links

* {{College Board 1901 introductions Standardized tests in the United States