How the digital SAT is scored

Every SAT score report carries three scaled scores. The two section scores are what colleges read most closely; the total is simply their sum.

There is no essay score. The optional essay was discontinued with the move to the digital test, so any guide still describing an essay band is describing the old test.

Each section is split into two modules of equal length. Reading and Writing is two 32-minute modules with 54 questions between them; Math is two 35-minute modules with 44. There is a 10-minute break between the sections.

The first module in a section is a broad mix of easy, medium and hard questions. How you do on it decides whether your second module is the harder or the easier version. This is called section-level adaptive testing: the test does not change question by question, it changes once, between modules.

• Being routed to the harder second module is what makes the top of the scale reachable. The easier module generally limits how high a section score can go.
• Being routed to the easier module is not a penalty on the questions you answer there. It reflects where the first module placed you.
• You cannot see which module you were given, and trying to infer it from how hard the questions feel is a reliable way to lose focus.

On the paper SAT you could count correct answers and look up a score. The digital SAT does not work that way. College Board scores it with item response theory, which weighs each question by its measured difficulty and how well it separates stronger from weaker students, and then places the result on the 200–800 scale.

Two students with the same number of correct answers can therefore receive different section scores, depending on which questions they got right and which second module they were routed to. Any "raw score conversion table" for the digital SAT is an approximation built by someone other than College Board.

Some questions in each module are unscored pretest questions being trialled for future tests. They look exactly like the scored ones, so the only sensible strategy is to treat every question as if it counts.

A wrong answer costs nothing beyond the point you did not earn. A blank earns nothing either. So an unanswered question is always worth a guess before a module's timer runs out.

• Mark questions you are unsure about and come back to them within the module. Once a module is submitted you cannot return to it.
• Math includes some student-produced response questions, where you type the answer rather than choosing it. A guess there is far less likely to be right, so those deserve your time more than a four-option question you are stuck on.
• A built-in Desmos graphing calculator is available throughout the Math section.

Every test score carries measurement error. A score of 1310 is best read as a range around 1310 rather than as an exact position, and the same student sitting two different forms a week apart will rarely get the identical number. That is why Studeous reports practice results as a band — see what a practice test score can tell you.

Percentiles, which say what share of test takers scored below you, are published by College Board and shift from year to year. Use the current figures from College Board rather than a number quoted in an old article.