What's SAT curve mean?

Test Preparation
1

<p>What does that mean? How badly does it affect your score?</p>

2

<p>The curve is based on how everyone who takes the SAT on a particular day does in relation to one another. If the test is hard, then less correct answers are needed to get a high score. This would make the curve high which makes it easier to get a high score. If the test was really easy and a lot of people got all of questions right, the curve would be lower so you would need to get more questions right to get a high score.</p>

<p>Here is an example in numbers:</p>

<p>Hard test:
Highest number of questions right is 62/67 on the critical reading section. Anybody who scores a 62 or 61 gets an 800. 60 correct would be a 790. So you can get a lot of questions wrong and still do well.</p>

<p>Easy test:
67/67 is highest score on critical reading section. Anybody who gets 67 or 66 gets an 800. 65 right would be a 790. So you need to get almost every question right to do well.</p>

<p>The hard test has a higher curve because more people got a lot of questions wrong whereas the easy test has a lower curve because more people got a lot of questions right.</p>

3

<p>That is not quite true. </p>

<p>Almost all questions used on the SAT are previously used in experimental sections. They test out questions to see how easy or hard they are. Also, if they find that, for instance a question that was, as a general rule, answered correctly by individuals who scored lower than individuals who generally scored higher (and got it wrong), they toss the question. If a question is being answered incorrectly by many high scorers and correctly by low scorers, it is not a good question…</p>

<p>They assemble the questions into the sections of xx critical reading questions, yy math questions and zz writing questions and based on statistical equations and such, assign scaled scores to make the test “equal” to other test</p>

<p>Test A might have scaled scores of</p>

<p>xx 800
xx-1 800
xx-2 790
xx-3 780</p>

<p>and so on</p>

<p>While test B might be</p>

<p>xx 800
xx-1 790
xx-2 770
xx-3 760</p>

<p>and so on…</p>

<p>The “curve” is established BEFORE anyone even takes the test. In my examples, test A was determined to be harder than test B BEFORE anyone takes the test.</p>