What’s a Good SAT Score in 2024-2025?

Did you or your child just get an SAT score back, and are you wondering what a good SAT score is? If so, in this blog, I’m going to talk you guys through the different score bands of what makes up a decent, a good, a great, and an awesome SAT score. I’m also going to give you lists of representative colleges from each of those score bands, and then we’re going to talk about the context of a test-optional, test-required, or test-blind environment and what your scores mean given those parameters.

So first, let’s start with a benchmark. What is a benchmark? A benchmark is a score that research from the College Board has found gives you about a 75% chance of succeeding in your first semester in college with grades of a C or better in similar disciplines. So for the math section, that would mean for a freshman algebra, pre-calculus, or calculus class, what score do you need to have a 75% chance of getting a C or above? And then on the verbal side for reading and writing, that could be a social science class, a history class, or an English literature class. So, on the reading and writing section, that benchmark is going to be 480 points, and on the math section, that’s 530. If you’re just hitting the benchmark or kind of just above that, I would say you have a decent SAT score.

What’s a DECENT SAT Score?

And where can a decent SAT score make a difference? At colleges where the median range of scores is about 980 to 1180, which are UMass Boston, Northern Arizona, University of Toledo, Old Dominion, University of West Florida, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Kent State, Wichita State, Rocky Mountain College, University of South Alabama, Central Michigan, Texas State, Sam Houston State, and Indiana State University. Now you might think that some of those colleges are test-optional, and some of them are. But at some of these colleges, a test score can make a difference in ways that you might not initially think about.

One, it can help with course placement, even at schools that don’t even take an SAT or an ACT. UCLA is test-blind, but your SAT reading score could get you out of an English class at UCLA. Another thing is scholarships, since many colleges and universities will consider SAT scores for scholarships. Some will even have grids where, if you have this GPA and this test score, you’ll automatically get a certain amount of money. Sometimes it’s automatic, sometimes it’s suggested, but it can definitely help you with scholarships. The third is the honors department. If you’re going to a school that maybe isn’t as highly ranked, you may want to be part of the honors department, and a test score can help you do that.

There are many reasons why a test score can be helpful at some of these colleges, so I recommend that you check out the policies for the particular schools that you’re interested in applying to. And in some states like Georgia, Florida, and Texas, there are many colleges and universities that are returning to test-required, and you need to pay attention to those requirements and rules. So, especially if you’re in one of those states and across the South, we’re seeing more and more test-required policies coming into play. I recommend that you double check before you apply to make sure that you’re in good shape.

What’s a GOOD SAT Score?

Next up, what’s a good SAT score? To me, a good SAT score is in the 1200s up to 1300. University of Denver, University of Delaware, University of Colorado Boulder, Marquette, Indiana, Texas A&M, University of South Carolina, University of Arizona, University of Iowa, Temple University, University of Oregon, Michigan State, University of New Hampshire, and University of North Dakota are some on this list. We have some big, huge state schools on this list, but there’s obviously lots of little schools that would also be happy to see that you’ve got a 1200 or 1250 or whatever it is that you have. And that’s going to help work in your favor again for all of these elements: scholarships, admission, class placement, automatic admission, automatic scholarships, all of these things. Your test score can help you, and that’s kind of a range of where that level of score speaks, where it can add to your application and help support the idea that you’re going to be able to succeed at this college.

What’s a VERY GOOD SAT Score?

Next up, we’re going to talk about what a very good SAT score is. To me, a very good SAT score is somewhere between 1300 and 1400. Where can you go with a very good SAT score and have your SAT score matter? And again, these are about median scores, so what I’m doing is going about the median in that 25th to 75th percentile range. That’s how I’m getting a sense of the order of these lists. University of Florida, University of Miami, Ohio State, Pepperdine, University of Texas at Austin, North Carolina State, Drexel, Purdue, University of Connecticut, University of Georgia, and Penn State. Now I will add a caveat to this, and that is, if you’re applying to particularly competitive majors, you might want a higher score. At Purdue, for example, if you’re applying computer science, I probably want to see a 700+ on each section and definitely a 750+ in your math. So, take all this with a grain of salt, because this is across the entire college. But ballpark: this gives you an idea of what kind of test scores can get you in the door.

What’s a GREAT SAT Score?

What’s a great SAT score? To me, a great SAT score is probably in the 1400s all the way up to a 1500. Colleges on this list include Emory University, Northeastern, Case Western, Villanova, Boston College, University of Notre Dame, Georgetown, University of Virginia, University of Michigan, University of Rochester, College of William and Mary, Tulane, UIUC, University of Wisconsin Madison, Boston University, Wake Forest University, Georgia Tech, UNC Chapel Hill, Lehigh, University of Washington (though note it is partially test-blind, so if you’re not at the 50th percentile or above—meaning if you do not score around a 1410 or above—they’re not even going to look at your score at all), and Southern Methodist University. All of these colleges have averages in the 1400s, up to 1500. I will note, as we start to get up the scale, that the whole question of test-optional or not test-optional does play a role, so I recommend you guys check out another video I have, which is about the best bets for test-optional.

What’s an AWESOME SAT Score?

Finally, we’re getting into what an awesome SAT score is. An awesome SAT score to me is in the 1500s. The median is around 1510 and above. We’re looking at a lot of schools in this range that have started to go test-required, and I’m going to talk in a minute about the calculus there, because, as you probably realize, in a test-optional world, test score ranges get inflated because suddenly there’s a whole lot of kids who didn’t submit anything. So when we take that whole off, taking the 25th to 75th percentile of the portion of the student body that’s actually submitting scores results in scores higher than when we used to have everybody submitting scores. The inflation to me is anywhere from 10 to 30 points per section, and I’m going to go through some specific numbers in a few minutes. For the colleges in this list: MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UPenn, Yale, Duke, Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, NYU, Wash U, Dartmouth, Rice, Vanderbilt, Harvey Mudd, Amherst, Williams, Cornell, Swarthmore, Tufts, Northwestern, USC, and Wellesley. I’m going to point out that you might see some surprises here, and that’s because NYU is highly test-optional, and they mean it. The sum of SAT and ACT scores at NYU of enrolled students was only 39%, which means over 61% of students got into NYU without any test scores at all, and NYU basically doesn’t want to see your test score if you don’t have a 1500+ or 700 in each section. They don’t want to see it, and you probably have better odds of getting in if you don’t submit, if you’re not in that 25th to 75th percentile. And that’s how their score range is up here with the heavy hitters. But it also means if you have a really high test score, NYU might be a good backup school, because maybe they’re going to take some people with really high test scores who might not have huge wow factors or amazing essays or whatever it is to try to help them get to this pinnacle of test score awesomeness.

*A few schools have not publicly released the 2023-2024 Common Data Set yet, but they have SAT score information on their official school websites.

A lot of these colleges have test sums that are in the 50th percentile. Even the University of Southern California is about 50-50 right now. Now we have really huge test availability issues in California, and USC pulls a lot of students from California, so that could be part of that issue. But again, you can truly get in test-optional in some of these schools, but I would say you’re probably not getting into some of these colleges where the sum is much higher. For example, Princeton has not been publishing the data, but I’m going to go ahead and call out that if all of Princeton’s peers are going test-required and you’re not submitting at Princeton, your odds are going to go down, probably by a lot.

2019 vs 2023

One other quick note: I pulled up the data from 2019 and 2023 at the four colleges that just went test-required that are on this list, which are Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard, and Yale. We’re going to add Stanford and Cornell to that in a year, but I’m not going to deal with them right now because they’re not there yet. What I want to show you is the score range inflation. Dartmouth hasn’t released any data since 2020 on purpose because they didn’t want this to get inflated, so theirs is probably going to be about the same; the reading and writing range is about 710 to 770 and the math is 730 to 790. But as you can see at Brown in 2019, it was lower than Dartmouth, 700 to 770, and then 740 to 800 in math. But you can see their 2023 numbers are way higher than their 2019 numbers; 740 to 770 is their reading range now, and 760 to 800 is their math range now.

My point to you is that if you want to apply to Brown and you only have a 1470 on the SAT, apply and see what happens, and don’t worry too much about it. Obviously, get your SAT score up if you can; it’s going to help. But 1495 was the median score in 2019, so if you’ve got a 1490, you probably have a shot. At 1470, you might have a shot at Brown this year, even though their ranges are higher. So, just take all these with a grain of salt. Harvard has the same thing: 740 to 780 in the verbal used to be 710 to 770. So here we just see that the lower end has popped up a little bit because people aren’t submitting scores. The higher end’s the same because people with high scores are still submitting. Obviously, it would be great to be in this 50th to 75th percentile range in 2023 at these four schools, but if you’re 20 points off, don’t stress out. I’m expecting most of these ranges to pop down 10 to 30 points this year, so we’ll see what happens.

We’d also love to help you get your scores up and help you learn all of the fundamentals that you need in order to succeed on the SAT, the ACT, and in college and beyond. Go crush the SAT!