What does the percentile exactly mean in SAT Exams?
“A 700 on the Math 2 will put you at around the 50th percentile.”–What is this!? Like you get a score 50 out of 100? Or you did better than the 58 % of the test takers?
Second one. Percentiles are set up to compare your score to others. A 700 on M2 means you did better than 50% of those who took the test. Same with all of the other tests.
The reason for this percentile being kind of “low” is that only prestigious/private colleges require subject tests for admission. These schools ALREADY have a higher caliber student applying, so most who take the tests SHOULD score higher than the average student in the world.
Hope that answers your question.
Yes 50%ile means you scored better than around 50% of test takers.
Note that percentiles are widely used outside of SAT exams, such as comparing body weight/height, or setting speed limits.
Sorry, but the info in post # 1, especially the second paragraph, is a bit misleading, IMO. I don’t think it’s technically untrue, just that I think it implies a few things that aren’t. Of course, I could just be misconstruing it.
The percentage is how your score compares to others who took the same test–not all students who studied the subject. However, a 700 would be a very different percentile on different subject tests.
The scores are set in order to compare what are supposedly similar levels of achievement on the tests. So, a 700 on the US history test is supposedly the equivalent level of mastery as a 700 on the SAT Math 2c. However, a 700 on the US history exam will be a higher percentage because more people who aren’t really great at history take the history exam than the number of people who aren’t really good at math who take the math 2c exam.
So, see this list of foreign language SAT II score distributions.https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-subject-tests-languages-subscore-2014.pdf If you score a 700 on the Chinese with listening test, you’re at the 45th percentile. If you get the same score on the French with listening, you’re at the 73rd percentile. A 700 on the Chinese exam is supposed to indicate language proficiency equivalent to a 700 on the French exam. But it’s a very different percentile because people who aren’t that great at foreign language and/or aren’t native speakers are more likely to study French in high school than Chinese. On the link chart, you can see how much the mean score differs on different SAT II tests. A 700 on the French exam is not more impressive than a 700 on the Chinese exam just because the test taker did better than more of the other students taking the test.
You really shouldn’t compare scores or percentiles from different subject tests because they are each different. However, in the real world, colleges often use a statistical summary which just lists the totals.
I’m no expert, but what I’ve been told is that colleges focus more on the number for SAT achievement tests than on the percentile.
Hope that helps.
@jonri, I think @AZGrove meant 50%ile means you did better than 50% of the test takers (same on all the other tests). I didn’t read it that a 700 meant the same thing across all tests. But maybe I read it wrong. 
If you go on the college board website and look at the distribution of scores for SAT subject tests you will find that a raw score of 700 or 750 or 800 means something very different for each specific test in terms of percentile. I’m fairly certain that the percentile is of all students taking the test.so if 10,000 took it, and you were at the 50 percentile your score was better than 5,000 students. As noted, the pool of students taking SAT subject tests are very strong so percentile on SAT subject test bears no relationship to the SAT itself