I suck at life

[Joe]

Because you can still get a 400 without doing anything.

So you get a 17% for doing nothing. Big deal?

Percentages would provide a false representation of your score. You say getting a 400 is 17%, but it really isn't. 17% would imply that on the test, if it was 100 reading and 100 math questions, one would get 34 correct, which in the case of the SAT, is incorrect. For the raw score, you get 1 point for a correct answer, 0 points for a blank, and -0.25 for an erroneous answer. Using percentages wouldn't be logical in this case, imo.

Sure it would. Just curve it downwards. All correct = 100%, all blank = 0%, any wrong = >0%. Or, go through it manually and curve the incorrect answers back to a 0 and then apply the previous curve, so it'd act like a normal test.

[d&q]

That doesn't make sense. What if someone got every answer incorrect? He would have a negative percentage, and what would that represent? Doing worse than possible?

[iago]

See, it's confusing. It would make more sense if they could reduce it to a percentage between 0 and 100, I think. It'll probably never change, but that doesn't stop it from being silly.

[Joe]

That doesn't make sense. What if someone got every answer incorrect? He would have a negative percentage, and what would that represent? Doing worse than possible?

Yeah. But I think it's a pretty stupid, hence recommending curving each incorrect answer back to 0.

[CrAz3D]

That doesn't make sense. What if someone got every answer incorrect? He would have a negative percentage, and what would that represent? Doing worse than possible?

Yeah. But I think it's a pretty stupid, hence recommending curving each incorrect answer back to 0.

Or maybe they could just round it to -1 and laugh when you can't get into college?

[AntiVirus]

I don't know what is good and what is bad on the SAT because I only had to take the ACT and only focused on that.  So I also picked the last one. 


The way I figured out which scores were good and bad on the ACT was looking at the average scores, what I needed to get into the college I wanted, and then the best possible score.  If I knew what all of those were for the SAT I could figure out what I wanted and what I personally would considered good.  It's not too confusing if you have the information you need, but most people don't.  I agree with iago for the most part though.  It would be relatively easier to understand and if it was on a normal percentage based scale.

[Rule]

See, it's confusing. It would make more sense if they could reduce it to a percentage between 0 and 100, I think. It'll probably never change, but that doesn't stop it from being silly.

It's not that silly.  When you receive your SAT score you receive a grade out of 800 for each section you write (this is the way it used to be at least), and you also receive the percentile you place in on each section.  Your score out of 800 is primarily determined by your percentile score, and so the college board scores are less confusing than a raw or scaled percentage grade. 

You then might think it would be more clear to just give a grade out of 100 that represents the percentile grade, but that isn't really the case.  From test to test there will be a slight variation in the types of questions, difficulty of questions, and quality of students taking the test, and so this is all taken into account as well when assigning the grade out of 800.  So avoiding numbers like "100" dodges the confusion that would arise out of interpreting the SAT score as solely a percentage or percentile grade.

The system makes perfect sense and it's well thought out.

[iago]

See, it's confusing. It would make more sense if they could reduce it to a percentage between 0 and 100, I think. It'll probably never change, but that doesn't stop it from being silly.

It's not that silly.  When you receive your SAT score you receive a grade out of 800 for each section you write (this is the way it used to be at least), and you also receive the percentile you place in on each section.  Your score out of 800 is primarily determined by your percentile score, and so the college board scores are less confusing than a raw or scaled percentage grade. 

You then might think it would be more clear to just give a grade out of 100 that represents the percentile grade, but that isn't really the case.  From test to test there will be a slight variation in the types of questions, difficulty of questions, and quality of students taking the test, and so this is all taken into account as well when assigning the grade out of 800.  So avoiding numbers like "100" dodges the confusion that would arise out of interpreting the SAT score as solely a percentage or percentile grade.

The system makes perfect sense and it's well thought out.

And gets more confusing every time I learn more about it!

[rabbit]

HOW it works isn't supposed to make sense to anyone outside the grading system.  THAT it works is all people care about.  I still say it's a crappy way to do it.  I mean, a single 6 hour test?  What if someone is sick and isn't even a good tester in the first place?

[CrAz3D]

its 6 hrs now?!

[Rule]

What if someone is sick

Then they should delay writing?

6 hours does seem excessive though. I think it was 3.5 hours when I wrote it.

[d&q]

Ha, yeah, it's not actually six hours. The actual test is almost four hours.

[trust]

Ok so i get my sat scores back and i thought i did really well cause i added up all my scores and added in my essay. but i turns out i wasn't suppose to add my essay score and well i did far worse
any one care to guess my sat reasoning score?

Well if you remove the essay score then your score is out of 1600.

It doesn't really matter that much anyway, I had like an 1800 or 1840 or something and I got into my 1st choice so...

[rabbit]

It was six hours both times I took it :\

[CrAz3D]

You took the new one?

Man, mine was like 3-4... 8am til noon or so.  (before the change)