Reality Check!

In these days of SAT anxiety, it may feel like every student applying to university has a higher SAT score than you do. That’s not true. To prove it, the following table shows the 25th percentile and 75th percentile of SAT scores for students enrolling at various selective US colleges and universities. Please note that this data is based upon the old Verbal and Math SAT-I.

On the table below, if a college shows scores as 1150 – 1350, it means that ¼ of the enrolled students had an SAT below 1150, and ¼ of the enrolled students had an SAT of higher than 1350. Half of the students had scores between 1150 and 1350. The data includes only those students who ENROLLED at the school, not the students who applied nor all the students who were accepted.

This information was provided by Cigus Vanni, a Counselor in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and is for the high school class of 2003 who started college in the fall of 2003. Sources included US News and World Report, The College Board, and The Princeton Review. While scores may have gone up slightly, they haven't changed much. As of 2007 most colleges were still using the two-part SAT (Verbal/Math).