How were SATs scored before the 80s?

July 22, 2009 2:22 PM

I'm having trouble finding the score range for the SATs in the 60s and 70s. Did the SAT always add up to 1600 pre-2005?
posted by geoff. to Education (12 answers total)

Best answer: My father took the SATs in the 60s and got a 1590 out of 1600.

FWIW.
posted by dfriedman at 2:26 PM on July 22, 2009

Wikipedia has mean scores for each year starting in 1972, and it appears that the total number of points possible was 1600, at least as far back as 1972.
posted by entropic at 2:30 PM on July 22, 2009

Wikipedia says yes. More than you ever wanted to know about the history of the SAT.
posted by katemonster at 2:31 PM on July 22, 2009

There was a math test and a verbal test and the score on each ranged from 200 to 800. The overall SAT score was the sum of the two.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:18 PM on July 22, 2009

Response by poster: Wikipedia made it seem that there were changes to the composition of the test, which apparently did not have any bearing on the 0-800 sectional scale. Since it wasn't explicit in saying "2 800 point tests since blah" it made it kind of confusing as to whether the scale changed at all. I'm fairly confident it has not. Thanks!
posted by geoff. at 6:49 PM on July 22, 2009

My father took the SATs in the 60s and got a 1590 out of 1600.

Interesting. In the mid-90s, I distinctly remember the test prep people saying that a 1590 was impossible - that the first wrong answer meant 20 points off. (And indeed, the conversion charts for raw scores to scaled scores showed this to be the case.) Obviously, things may well have changed between the 60s and the 90s.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:42 PM on July 22, 2009

I think it's always been a 1600-point scale, but portions of the test have been reweighted at least once to modify its degree of difficulty. As I recall, the verbal component of the SAT was made easier in the mid 90s, so that a score taken after that change equated to one 70 points lower prior to the change. There were probably similar changes in earlier decades, so that while the 1600-point scale was always there, and with probably the same distributions in a given year, the test's difficulty in the 80s probably differs from the test's difficulty now.
posted by darth_tedious at 8:15 PM on July 22, 2009

Seconding that a score greater than 1580 was possible in the 60's.
posted by JimN2TAW at 10:13 PM on July 22, 2009

FWIW, I scored 1590 in 1977. If that's no longer possible, then something has definitely changed.
posted by trip and a half at 12:47 AM on July 23, 2009

They re-balance the test every couple of years, so that the 50th percentile remains squarely at 1000. (1500, now that the test is out of 2400) Since raw scores have steadily been on the decline, some of the statistical wizardry that goes into normalizing the scores have created situations like Cornelius is describing.

As an interesting side effect, it's damn near impossible to accurately compare scores from more than a few years apart, as my mother and I discovered shortly after I edged out her 30-year-old score back in the early part of this decade. (And yes, her score in 1968 was out of 1600)
posted by Mayor West at 4:45 AM on July 23, 2009

Interesting. In the mid-90s, I distinctly remember the test prep people saying that a 1590 was impossible - that the first wrong answer meant 20 points off. (And indeed, the conversion charts for raw scores to scaled scores showed this to be the case.) Obviously, things may well have changed between the 60s and the 90s.

So, let me amend my statement: my father has told me that he scored a 1590 out of 1600 in the 60s.

I have no way to verify this but don't see why he'd lie about it. Of course he could be mistaken, and received a 1580.

Regardless, it seems clear to me that the maximum score was a 1600 in the 1960s.
posted by dfriedman at 3:33 PM on July 23, 2009

Oh, I wasn't doubting your dad at all.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 12:09 PM on July 25, 2009