SAT Scoring Basics

Understand how students earn points, how to interpret scores, and ways students can use their scores after the test.

No Penalty for Guessing

On the SAT, students earn points for all questions answered correctly. Encourage your students to give their best answer to every question. Let them know there's no advantage to leaving questions blank.

Interpret Scores

Students may access their score and insights online to help them look beyond the numbers, see how they stack up, figure out where they can improve, and get a free tailored study plan with Official SAT Prep on Khan Academy^®.

How Students Can Send Scores

When sending scores through their College Board account, students can choose which day's test scores to send to colleges. They can send a single day's scores or scores of every SAT they've ever taken with Score Choice™.

For the free score sends students may send when they register for the SAT on a weekend or when they take the SAT as part of in-school testing, only the scores from the specific test day will be sent.

Also, students can't send partial scores from different days. For instance, they can't send a Math score from one test day and an Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score from another.

Find more details about what students can do with their scores.