There are three important SAT scores, which are all actually different ways of describing the same score. The “raw score” is a simple measure of your right and wrong answers, similar to the grade you might receive on a normal test in school. The “percentile score” takes your raw score and compares it to the rest of the raw scores in the country, letting you (and colleges) know how you did in comparison to your peers. The “scaled score,” which ranges from 400–1600 (200–800 for verbal and 200–800 for math), compares your score to the scores received by all students who have ever taken the SAT.

You will never know what your raw score was on the SAT because the raw score is not included in the SAT score report. But you should understand how the raw score is calculated, since this knowledge can affect your test-taking strategy.

A student’s raw score is based solely on the number of questions answered correctly, incorrectly, or left blank. A correct answer is worth one point; leaving a question blank yields no points; a wrong answer results in the loss of of ¹ /₄ of a point if the question had five answer choices or ¹ /₃ of a point if it had four (quantitative comparisons). Getting a grid-in wrong will not negatively affect your raw score.

Calculating the raw score for the verbal section is easy. Just add up the number of questions you got right and the number of questions you got wrong. Then multiply the number you got wrong by ¹/₄, and subtract this value from the number you got right:

The math raw score is a little harder to calculate, since you have to account for the different values you can lose when you get different types of math questions wrong:

In the chapter called General SAT Strategies (see ) we’ll discuss how the rules for calculating a raw score affect strategies for guessing and leaving questions blank.

Your percentile is based on the percentage of the total test takers who received a lower raw score than you did. If, for example, James Joyce received a verbal score in the 99th percentile, that would mean he scored better on the verbal section than 99% of the other students who took the same test (it also means that 1% of the students taking that test scored as well or better).

The scaled score takes the raw score and uses a formula to place it onto the standard SAT scale of 200–800 for each section. The average scaled score on the SAT is a few points above 500, and more students receive 800s than 200s.

A more detailed scoring chart that will show you how to translate your raw score into a scaled score resides with the practice tests at the end of the book . Please note that because ETS, the company that produces the SAT, slightly adjusts the curve for each administration of the test, our chart will not always be precisely correct. But it will be generally correct—within 20 points.