SAT scores can be surprising, because they don’t always match up with the amount of effort you put into high school. Students who break their backs under the weight of honors classes piled on top of honors classes (or AP, advanced, or whatever you call the highest level classes at your school) and do every speck of homework that comes their way don’t always have the top scores. Sure, there’s a correlation—after all, the SAT does test concepts and skills you study in school, especially SAT math—but there are a ton of exceptions: I myself slacked off in many of my classes, but scored higher than 96% of test takers in both sections of the test (back before the writing section was introduced). I’m not exactly proud of that, but I’m willing to admit it. Meanwhile, I knew a number of people who definitely worked harder than I did in class but scored lower. That seemed pretty unfair, even though I came out of it with a sweet deal.
It’s precisely that situation that leads to the eternal question: what’s a good SAT score, anyway? Year after year, thousands of students score lower than they expect and then go looking to see if their scores were actually all that bad. Pretty often, it really is the case that people just don’t know what scores they should be shooting for. Misunderstandings of how the SAT is scored create unrealistic expectations. I find myself saying this a lot: the SAT isn’t like most tests, because you’re not shooting for 100% (almost nobody is). A score that looks low, because it’s far from the max, can be very respectable. Most people score between 1200 and 1800. So if you have a surprisingly “low” SAT score, think back on what you expected and how realistic it actually was.
Aside from that, you could also argue that the SAT isn’t a very good test of your academic ability in the first place. That’s why the College Board is changing the test so drastically in a couple of years. But I prefer to think of it as just a test of other skills, such as creative problem-solving, working under pressure, and reading experience—things that you can have in abundance but that might not lead to a stellar GPA, necessarily. In other words, the SAT can be a way for smart students who don’t like to follow the rules to improve their college applications. And it is just a part of the overall application, keep in mind. Most colleges care much more about the rest of what they learn about you.
So don’t freak out if your scores aren’t quite as good as your GPA. Of course it would help to have an even higher score, and it’s worth studying the test to improve those SAT skills, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture and what your SAT scores actually represent—they are not a summary of you as a student by any means.
This post was written by Lucas Fink, resident SAT expert at Magoosh, a leader in SAT Prep. You can learn more about Magoosh on our SAT blog!
