What counts as a good SAT score?
There is no universal good score, and treating the national average as a target is the most common way people set the wrong one. The only score that matters is the one relative to the schools you are applying to — specifically their middle 50% range, which is published.
"Good" is not a property of a score. It is a relationship between a score and a decision somebody is going to make with it.
The number to look upLink to the section: The number to look up
Every college publishes the middle 50% SAT range of its admitted class — the 25th and 75th percentile. That range, for the specific schools on your list, is the only benchmark that answers the question.
Read it like this:
At or above the 75th percentile, your SAT is a strength and further points have diminishing returns. Your time is better spent elsewhere in the application.
Between the 25th and 75th, your SAT is neutral. It will not hurt you and it will not carry you. Moving from the 30th to the 60th percentile of that range is worth real effort; moving from the 60th to the 70th generally is not.
Below the 25th, your SAT is a liability that other parts of the application have to compensate for. This is where preparation has the most leverage, and where the difference between a 1180 and a 1290 genuinely changes outcomes.
Note that this is per school. A 1300 is well above the 75th percentile at one institution and below the 25th at another, and both facts are true at the same time.
Where percentiles help and where they misleadLink to the section: Where percentiles help and where they mislead
A percentile tells you how you compare to other test-takers. It is useful for orientation — knowing you are around the 75th nationally tells you something real about your position.
It misleads in two specific ways.
The comparison group is everyone who took the test, not everyone applying to your schools. The applicant pool at a selective institution is not a random sample of test-takers, so a national percentile substantially overstates your position within it.
And percentiles compress at the top. The gap between the 95th and 99th percentile is a large number of scaled points and a small number of percentile points, which makes high scores look closer together than they are.
Use the school's published range. Use percentile only for a rough sense of where you sit.
What a practice percentile is worthLink to the section: What a practice percentile is worth
If you are looking at a percentile from a practice platform, including ours, remember what it is comparing you against: everyone else who took that practice test on that platform. That is not a national sample. People who seek out practice tests are, on average, preparing harder than people who do not.
A leaderboard position is a diagnostic — it tells you whether your score is normal for this stage of preparation among people also preparing. It is not a verdict and it is not a national ranking.
Setting your own targetLink to the section: Setting your own target
Work backwards, in this order.
List your schools. Find each one's middle 50%. Take the 75th percentile of the most selective school you are seriously applying to, and make that your target — not the average of your list, which produces a number that is comfortable for the schools you would get into anyway.
Then compare it against your current band, not your current point estimate. If your band is 1210–1290 and your target is 1350, the gap is at least 60 points and possibly 140, and that range is the honest input to the question of how much time this deserves.
If the gap is under about 50 points, it is a matter of weeks. If it is over 200, it is a matter of months and you should also be asking whether the list is right.
Find out where you actually stand
Two full-length adaptive mocks, free, with every explanation — and a score band that tells you how confident it is.
Related
Do SAT section scores get averaged into the total?
Reading and Writing and Math are each scored 200–800 and added, not averaged or weighted. What that means for where your study time should go, and why the same total can mean very different things.
What does a practice SAT score range actually mean?
Why a practice test should report a range like 1210–1290 rather than a single number, what the width of that range is telling you, and how to use it against a target school.
How should you read your practice test results?
Your scaled score is the least useful number on the results page. What to read first, what a domain breakdown tells you that a total cannot, and why you should review the questions you got right.
The full method behind all of this: how your score is calculated.
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