Where Does Your SAT Score Rank You Among High School Teenagers?

The SAT test is given nationally to high school teenagers to help determine the stronger students that are entering college.  The SAT exams are produced by a non-profit organization, the College Board. Students are expected to know the writing rules, understand math operations and know how to comprehend reading material.  The scores that students receive on these exams are a major factor on where they will go to school. Lately, SAT scores have been declining across the country in which shocks many people. With all of today’s new technology, you would imagine that students have more resources to study and perform well on these exams. I pulled a 1800 on all three parts and a 1210 on two parts.

            The SAT exams come in two formats. There is the first exam in which is scored between 600-2400. Then there is the second type of exams called SAT Subject Tests in which allow you to take one hour tests on different topics you may have learned in school.  Studies show that 65% of students who score a benchmark score of 1550 on the SAT exam will pass with a B- in college.  The problem is that only 45% of last year’s students reached the score of 1550. In the United States, over 1.65 million students took the SAT in the year of 2011.  The subject the scores are declining in is reading. Writing dropped a couple points and math stays at the highest of the three scores but dropped one or two points on the average. The reason students are doing worse in reading since four decades ago is because our nation’s teenagers are lazy. Technology can be blamed for the student’s willingness to know the facts and not just look it up on the Internet.  Using social media websites have also caused teenagers to disregard grammar rules and make abbreviations for words.  As technology increases, student’s scores will decrease in reading and writing.  Math is not affected as much because you can’t Google every math question!

            The College Board will continue to notice trends in college bound teenagers on the SAT exams.  Colleges will still only pick the best available students for their college.  The problem is that schools are worrying too much about state exams and not teaching the students the real facts.  Our country needs to address the problems with teenagers before problems can get worse.  How can we expect our future students to solve the newest problems in the world if they are scoring lower scores then pervious students? Shouldn’t the population get smarter as history progresses?

Mean SAT Score for reading and math tests, by year (Photo credit: Wikipedia)