The source of dread for nearly 2 million high schoolers every year, the SAT, or Scholastic Assessment Test, is a three-hour juggernaut designed to test a student's abilities in reading, math, and writing abilities. Grade point average, extracurricular activities, and supplemental essays are all important factors in a college application; however, the SAT provides a way to compare students nationwide, no matter how grades are weighted or how many clubs exist at individual high schools.
About 2,000 universities dropped the SAT from application requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though many—including Ivy League schools like Brown University and Dartmouth College—have reinstated the testing component in their application process as of 2024, other universities have chosen not to follow suit.
The SAT has its fair share of naysayers. Many experts point out that high SAT scores are only loosely correlated with success in college, which is better predicted by high school grades. Higher SAT scores are strongly associated with higher family income, likely due, at least in part, to the fact that families with higher incomes can afford expensive tutors and exam preparation courses.
To counteract the criticism, the College Board, which administers the SAT, made sweeping changes to the test in 2016, no longer requiring students to memorize archaic vocabulary and removing point penalties for guessing.
Across the nation, SAT scores vary widely. Stacker referenced College Board data reported by PrepScholar to rank the states with the highest performance on the SAT, drawing on results from the class of 2022. Each state's average composite score is included along with the average scores in Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and Math, as well as the participation rate, which indicates how many students in the state took the test. Certain places mandate high schoolers to take the test, leading to higher participation rates but lower scores overall; only states where at least 20% of students took the SAT were included.
Read on to see where your state stacks up in mastering the SAT.
