<p>Question: Which SAT exam sets the curve for the year? Someone told me that my daughter should take the December SAT and not take the January SAT because the January SAT is when all the private school kids take it and they have been fully prepared by their schools. Is there a difference? [...]</p>
<p>I took mine in June and scored about a 120 points higher than when I took it again in October. </p>
<p>-> those scores are NOT being sent out anywhere.</p>
<p>Everyone in our school had their scores go down on the October SAT, and I heard a similar story from another nearby school.</p>
<p>In case anyone looks at this, I’ll post it. There’s a big misconception that the SAT is curved according to who takes it. This isn’t true. Oh, they curve it, but they curve it before. Probably, they have experimental test takers or even a computer that help them curve it. Technically anyone can get a 2400 (I’m getting this from the Princeton Review by the way), I took the October one too, it sucked, and I’m taking it in January. Hopes this helps someone worried about the date they signed up for.</p>
<p>Gosh, I’ve never heard this. My D took her tests whenever she had an available date…because there were so few time she did (due to ECs). She took SAT in October of her Jr year, along with her PSAT because she knew she wouldn’t have any other dates. And she took the ACT in June after Junior year because that was her next available date. SAT IIs in June too (or whever is the last one…May?). I thought they curved EACH sitting according to the results from THAT sitting.</p>
<p>I was told by my SAT professor that there is a whole section in the SAT test that is considered “experimental”. This means that this section doesn’t count for the score, however, they don’t tell you what it is. So if you score poorly in the math section there is a chance thay they may discard it which might help increase the overall score. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>@Merciady: there are 3 Writing (including the essay), 3 Critical Reading, and 3 Math sections that count. But there are 10 sections on the SAT. It will be obvious which subject has an experimental section because there will be four of them (on my SAT, there were 4 math sections and 2 were grid-ins, so I could deduce that one of them would be experimental since there should be only 1 grid-in section). But this won’t help you much since the raw-to-scaled conversion is an overall subject raw score, not based on each section of the subject.</p>
<p>Typically, the curve is best when the students taking it are the least experienced: October has many seniors taking it so the curve is bad, while March is known to have a good curve because many Juniors are taking it for the first time and will not do as well.</p>
<p>I thought the October one was the easiest my score went up by 130 points (I had taken the May sat before)</p>