Are you disappointed with your June 2018 SAT scores? You’re not the only one! Many students who took the June 2018 test saw that they got fewer questions wrong, but somehow received a lower score than a test they took on an earlier date. These seemingly contradictory results were especially true for the Math section of the test. While knowing that other students are in the same boat won’t change your score, it may be helpful to gain some insight into what happened on this test.
In order to understand what happened, it’s necessary to know what ‘equating’ means. Basically, The College Board has to make SAT tests taken from month to month equal to each other. While they try to make all SAT tests the same level of difficulty, that is not always possible. Instead, they use a process called ‘equating’ to make tests taken on one test date equal to other tests. This means that, for example, missing three questions on an “easier” test may get you the same score as missing one question on a “harder” test. This process of equating is used to ensure that all SAT tests are comparable to each other.
Let me give you some examples to show what happened with equating on the June SAT. Let’s say you took the SAT in October 2017. On that test, if you got one question wrong on the math section, you still got an 800 as your total math score. However, on the June 2018 test, if you got one question wrong, your math score was 770. Or, if you got nine questions wrong on that same October test, your math score was a 710. However, on the June test, you only received 640. While this seems unfair for individual students, this process is done to make scores equivalent across different test dates.
What does all of this mean for students who took the June SAT? Unfortunately, The College Board will not be rescoring the tests and colleges will not be making any adjustments to how they evaluate the June SAT in relation to other test dates. Equating is something that The College Board has always done and is an important part of their scoring process. They have published a blog specifically discussing the June 2018 date that you can read here to get more information about the process of equating and the results of the June 2018 test. https://blog.collegeboard.org/june-2018-sat-score-release-faq
