Why is the SAT out of 800?

Test Preparation
1

<p>It seems pretty arbitrary. Why does it go from 200-800, and not something more standard, like 0-1000? Any insight on this?</p>

2

<p>Because it’s totally screwed up…</p>

3

<p>Interesting question…</p>

4

<p>MrPropapanda summed it up sufficiently.</p>

5

<p>I noticed the CLEP has a similar scoring range (20-80). Why does collegeboard like those numbers so much?!?!?</p>

6

<p>I answered already. It’s screwed up.</p>

7

<p>Yep. I think that’s a good enough answer. Case closed then.</p>

8

<p>I can’t think of a reason.</p>

9

<p>Well, perhaps the SAT scale follows an approximate normal model? In that case it is easy to understand why they chose 200-800. The mean score would be close to 500 (sounds better than 400 or 600 right?) and the standard deviation would be about 100. Anything greater that 3 standard deviations from the mean would totally make the scale bad. Unless you have taken a statistics course, you might not have any ideas of what Im talking about.</p>

10

<p>^ That’s a good point. Indeed, the standard deviation is around 100.</p>

11

<p>You may be right. But that doesn’t prove that the SAT’s are not screwed up.</p>

12

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<p>Please elaborate.</p>

13

<p>idontthinkiremem is probably spot-on. I also always assumed it wasn’t from 0-1000 because people might unconsciously associate scores with either percentages or percentiles.</p>

14

<p>Because “8” is lucky for azns and we’ve infiltrated collegeboard. Duh.</p>

15

<p>In principle, any linear transformation of the scaled scores would be just as good.</p>

<p>However, consider the following linear mapping:</p>

<p>new scale score = (old scale score - 500) / 3</p>

<p>This new scaled score is just as meaningful from a math point of view. However, now people who achieved an average score would get (about) zero, those who scored less than average would get negative scores, and those who did very well would score about 100. The first implies, well, “you’re a zero,” the second implies that you’re not even above water, and the third incorrectly implies some kind of perfection.</p>

<p>The 200-800 was probably chosen to avoid these types of issues.</p>

16

<p>

I like this theory.</p>