{"id":15044,"date":"2020-01-15t21:44:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-16t05:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.catharsisit.com\/hs\/?p=15044"},"modified":"2020-01-15t21:44:25","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16t05:44:25","slug":"does-the-sat-curve-really-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.catharsisit.com\/hs\/sat\/does-the-sat-curve-really-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"does the sat curve really exist? how the scoring actually works"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
we’ve all been there: the teacher announces that your super-difficult test was (drumroll, please\u2026) graded on a curve! and so, when students start studying for the sat, they often ask: is the sat curved?<\/em> however, the sat is never graded on a curve\u2014and this is actually good<\/em> news for test-takers!<\/p>\n first, let’s clarify what we mean by “grading on a curve.” when teachers mark exams on a curve, this means that they take the scores everyone got and place them on a bell curve. highest-scoring students receive an a, most students receive bs, cs, and ds, and lowest-scoring students fail.<\/p>\n an important part of being graded on a curve is that your grade depends a lot on how other test-takers performed. you could score 17 points out of 100 and get an a if nobody scored higher. on the other hand, you could score 97 points out of 100 and get an f if nobody scored lower. <\/p>\n so let’s clear this up right now: grading on a curve isn’t necessarily good or bad. while it often benefits students taking really hard classes, it completely depends on the situation.<\/p>\n on test day, you’ll encounter several sections on the sat<\/a>: evidence-based reading and writing (broken down into reading and writing sections), math, and (if you signed up for it) the essay. <\/p>\n when scoring your exam, the college board counts each question you got right in each multiple-choice subject as one point. you don’t lose points for wrong answers (though test-takers used to, this is no longer the policy). the maximum scores in each subject are 52 in reading, 44 in writing, and 58 in math. because the essay isn’t multiple-choice, it’s graded differently<\/a>.<\/p>\n then, these raw scores are converted into two scaled scores: one for evidence-based reading and writing and one for math. these are the familiar 200-800 point scales within each section, combined to a total of 400-1600 points overall. <\/p>\n as you can see, the myth of the sat curve is a misconception about the scoring process.<\/strong> however, there is<\/em> a process known as “sat equating” that can affect your score.<\/p>\n sat equating comes into play when the college board translates the scores from a given test from raw to scaled. <\/p>\n the college board’s goal is to have an average score<\/a> of 500 in each section, for an overall composite score of 1000 (easy to remember, right?). however, because the average score depends on how test-takers performed, they need to adjust the raw-to-scaled calculation to accommodate this and ensure a standard deviation<\/a> of 100 points per section.<\/p>\nwhat does it mean to grade on a curve?<\/h2>\n
how is the sat graded?<\/h2>\n
forget the sat curve\u2014it\u2019s all about equating<\/h2>\n