About the SAT

The SAT is an admissions test that measures critical reading, mathematical reasoning, and writing skills. The SAT lasts 3 hours and 45 minutes. In the U.S., the SAT is administered on 7 national test dates, in October, November, December, January, March/April, May, and June. See http://www.collegeboard.com for registration information.

Colleges and universities use the SAT as one measure among others—class rank, high school GPA, extracurricular activities, personal essays, and teacher recommendations—of a student's readiness to do college-level work. SAT scores are compared with the scores of other applicants and the accepted scores at an institution; scores can also be used as a basis for awarding scholarships and merit-based financial aid.

Note: The current format of the SAT was administered for the first time March 2005. Before March, the SAT was administered in a format including only two sections: math and verbal.

Test Format

Section	Time	Number of Questions	Content Covered
Writing	Essay: 25 minutes Multiple Choice: 35 minutes (one 25-minute section and one 10-minute section)	1 essay question 49 multiple-choice questions: 25 improving sentences 18 identifying sentence errors 6 improving paragraphs	ability to organize, express, and develop ideas grammar, usage, diction, sentence structure, idiomatic expressions
Critical Reading	70 minutes (two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section)	67 multiple-choice questions: 19 sentence completions 48 reading comprehension	vocabulary knowledge and understanding meaning in context literal and inferential reading comprehension
Math	70 minutes (two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section)	54 questions: 44 multiple-choice 10 grid-in (student-produced response)	numbers and operations algebra and functions plane and coordinate geometry statistics, probability, and data analysis
Variable (Experimental Section: not factored into student’s final score)	20 or 25 minutes	varies	varies

Grading

The three sections-Writing, Critical Reading, and Math-are each graded on a scale from 200–800, making a perfect score 2400. The essay is graded on a scale from 2–12 and comprises 25% of the total Writing score. The SAT penalizes students for guessing: for every wrong response to a question with multiple-choice answers a student loses 1/4 of a point. No points are deducted for wrong answers to student-produced response questions.

The SAT now offers score choice, which means that a student may submit his or her best score to colleges without the other scores being known.

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