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About the SAT

The SAT is a standardized test that colleges and universities use to help assess the qualifications of applicants. The College Board, which administers the SAT, designed the test to measure literacy, writing, and reasoning skills needed for academic success on campus. It does not test facts (other than vocabulary definitions), so if you think Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1997, your friends might raise some eyebrows, but the SAT will give you a pass.

Quick facts

• The test is offered 7 times a year in the United States, and 6 times a year for students overseas. The length of the test is 3 hours and 45 minutes. There is one experimental section that does not count toward your score. (Do NOT try to guess which one it is.)
• It costs $45 ($94 internationally) to take the SAT.
• The SAT is used as an assessment tool by more than 2,300 colleges and universities in the United States.
• In 2010, the SAT is expected to be administered to almost 2,000,000 college hopefuls.
• According the College Board, the average SAT scores for 2009 college-bound seniors were 501 Critical Reading, 515 Math, 493 Writing.
• Students with disabilities, including physical and learning disabilities, are eligible to take the SAT with special accommodations. The standard time increase for students requiring additional time due to learning disabilities is time + 50%; time + 100% is also offered. Additionally, a test reader can be made available to you. Talk to your school's guidance counselor for more info.

Scoring the SAT

The most important number on the SAT is your total score; it's measured out of 2400, but that's not the whole story. There are 3 sections on the SAT, each scored between 200-800 points. The test was substantially overhauled in 2005, when an entire new section, Writing, was added. Because the section was so new there wasn't much historical data on which to compare applicants. For this reason and others, colleges admissions officers initially didn't place much—if any—stock in students' Writing scores, and schools continued to publish average SAT scores based on the 1600-point model.

Five years later this appears to be changing, though some schools continue only to cite average Math scores and average Critical Reading scores in their guidebooks. Regardless, you should approach the Writing section with the same alacrity (great SAT vocab word! meaning cheerful readiness) as you would the other two sections. The 1600-point model will soon be a distant memory.