<p>Do colleges evaluate your SAT score by comparing it to the nation's average, your state's average, your region's average, or your school's average? The reason I am asking is because I come from a school of low testers and two of my scores are really good nationally but there is one score I got that scored in the 84th percentile nationally but 97th percentile for my school and 89th precentile for my state.</p>
<p>Will the colleges evaluate me compared to my school? Or do they compare everyone nationally? I've heard all sorts of different answers crawling around here on CC and would like it if someone who actually knows for sure could answer this.</p>
<p>they look at your scores based on the scores of applicants to the college/university that you are Applying to, or those scores of current students. the national average is a 1500, or 1000 math and critical reading. However most universities want students with higher scores than 1500. so no they they neither look at your school average,national average, or state average. these two statistics are at times unimportant and out of scope</p>
<p>for instance you could have gotten a 580 on the reading section which is at 80% percentile for both your school and state. But university x has a middle 50% range of reading scores between 590-630, and obviously then you would be in the lower percentile of that school</p>
<p>Colleges evaluate your SAT scores by their application pool. They compare you to the other students applying to their college. Simple and plain.</p>