I've been hearing a lot about a curve on the SAT online but I'm not really sure what that means. Can somebody explain this curve to me and how it affects grading on the SAT? Any information would be super helpful, thanks!
Hi there! I'd be happy to help clarify the concept of the SAT curve that you've been hearing about. The 'curve' on the SAT refers to the process that College Board uses to adjust raw scores into scaled scores. This is done to account for small differences in difficulty between different test versions and ensure all test-takers are scored fairly.
For each SAT administration, College Board uses a process called 'equating' to determine how many raw points (the number of questions answered correctly) correspond to each scaled score on the 200-800 range for the Math and Evidence-Based Reading & Writing sections. This means that the curve can change slightly between different test dates depending on the overall difficulty of that specific test version.
In practice, this should not have a major impact on individual test-takers. Your focus should be on performing to the best of your abilities. The curve system is in place to maintain fairness and ensure that all students are scored in a consistent manner across different test dates.
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