this is a question i get a lot from parents wondering whether their child should take the sat as a junior or wait until senior year.
their thinking is that if the student does well enough on the sat for a junior, then they don’t have to worry about taking the sat as a senior. the thing is: colleges don’t give preferential treatment to those who take the sat at a younger age. you can take the sat in 6th grade, get an 1800, and then never take the sat again. that 1800 isn’t any different from a senior’s 1800.
good junior year sat score
so the real question, then, is what is a good sat score?
yet, it might not be quite so simple. given that, at least on average, students become more intellectually mature in an extra year of schooling–vocabularies enlarge, a sense of proper grammar becomes more fine-tuned, the ability to concentrate through dense increases slightly–a senior might expect to see a 50-point increase in an sat score. that might not seem like much, but going from a 1950 to a 2000 does look like a big deal on paper.
provided that you continue to pay attention in school and you continue to do some sat prep in your spare time, you will probably do a little bit better as senior, but not by too much.
a good sat score for a junior, therefore, is about 50 points less than what a good sat score is for a senior. as to what a good sat score is for senior? well, that is a little more difficult to answer. it depends on the schools you are applying to, your current gpa, on a host of other factors, such as your essay or extracurricular activities. 1800 is a pretty good score; 2000 is clearly a good score and 2100+ is a great score.
if you are a junior and you have enough time to study, then getting close to 2000 is a good score.
leave a reply