The Student Room Group

How are the SAT's Marked and Marks Awarded

I was just wondering how the SATs were marked, for example is there a possibility of not getting 100% in raw marks and still get an 800, like you can get full UMS without geting full raw in a level. In addition roughly what percentage would you need to get to be awarded a 700- for example. Also does the diffuculty of different papers affect boundaries as they do in the uk.
I honestly don't know the mechanics of it, and I'm American.
But it's a combination of raw score and percentile. If you get 2 questions wrong and that's the highest score among the cohort you will get an 800 in that section.
I'm sure someone else knows better than I do though.
Generally for maths you can get two questions wrong and still have an 800 and for critical reading you can get about 4 or so wrong. It varies ever so slightly each year. You can find conversion tables in sparknotes and other websites, just search for it. For SAT IIs the table is more lenient, but then the content is also harder.

It's a lot harsher than UMS though. In one of my Further maths exams, i left out essentially a whole question (1 out of 8) and stil got 99% so i think it can be a bit silly. For SATs it's very easy to make mistakes because of the time constraints so its very difficult to get 800 even though you dont need full raw marks
Reply 3
It is possible to obtain an 800 without a 100% on the raw score. All the exams are almost of equal difficulty, and Collegeboard strives to maintain a median of 507 for Maths and 503 for CR. Changes in the candidate pool therefore effect the conversion of the raw score to the '800-scale score' slightly.
Craziest marking system I've ever come across.
Reply 5
Hobbesian
I was just wondering how the SATs were marked, for example is there a possibility of not getting 100% in raw marks and still get an 800, like you can get full UMS without geting full raw in a level. In addition roughly what percentage would you need to get to be awarded a 700- for example. Also does the diffuculty of different papers affect boundaries as they do in the uk.

I'd like to direct you to this post where I detailed the marking system. There's a link to the source if you'd like to read more.