I have been contacted my multiple clients regarding the June 2, 2018 SAT test. Why are they upset, and what happened?

Students and parents all over the country feel gypped, or cheated by this SAT test, because they got relatively few questions incorrect, yet received a score that seems low. How can this be?

The College Board tries to score the SAT so that a student will get a similar score regardless of which SAT date he or she chose. They do this by scaling or "equating" the scores. For example, if a student scored in the 90th percentile in any test, they would receive a score of 1340. That is true if this was a "hard" SAT and he or she got 20 questions incorrect, or if it was an "easy" version of the test, and he or she only got 8 questions wrong.

The June 2018 test turned out to be "easy", so many students got fewer wrong than they did on previous tests, but their score was the same, or lower than before, because of how they scored relative to all other test-takers. Since students only got a few wrong, each incorrect question made a big difference in the student's percentile, and therefore greatly affected their score.

I feel sorry for these students, but I don't expect the College Board to change any scores from this test. They will probably just make sure that future tests are hard enough to differentiate between students more easily.

Still have questions about this SAT or other parts of admissions? Give me a call!

Best,

Eric