What's A Good SAT Score?
One of the most common questions about the SAT is, “What is a good SAT score?” Well, the answer may not be the one you’re looking for. The truth is that a “good” SAT score depends on how you define “good.” After all, if your goal is to earn admission to Yale, a “good” score will be significantly higher than it would be if your goal is to earn admission to the University of Connecticut.
To determine what “good” score will be for you, you first need to decide on a handful of potential colleges where you’d like to apply. For each college, you should determine the median SAT scores. The median SAT scores tell us where the middle 50% of previously admitted students scored.
For example, at the University of Connecticut, the middle 50% of admitted students for the class of 2022 scored between 1210 and 1390.
The median SAT scores give us some idea of what a student needs to score in order to be competitive for admission at a certain college. So, for a student hoping to earn admission to UConn, we might say that a “good” score falls at the top end of that median range – a student scoring 1300 to 1390 will have a good chance for admission, assuming that his grades, extracurriculars, and essays also stack up. A “great” score would fall above the median range – a student scoring above 1390 would have a great chance for admission (again, assuming that grades and other factors are similarly impressive).
One excellent resource for determining the median SAT scores at a college is the College Board’s Big Future website. We’ve also compiled recent test score data for some top colleges here.
Read the full post on our blog and see a list of the median SAT scores for top national and liberal arts colleges.