TutoringForSAT

Is My SAT Score Good?

Is my SAT score good? Enter it to see its percentile, its gap to the average, and how it fits your target school. Free, no sign-up.

By , TutoringForSat.com

Last checked October 7, 2026

Check a score

From 400 to 1600. Scores that aren't a multiple of 10 are rounded to the nearest 10.
Compare to a school (optional)

Use the school's 25th and 75th percentile SAT scores. You'll find them in its Common Data Set, section C9, or on its admissions profile page.

Enter a score to see its percentile and how it compares.

On this page

SAT score bands and percentiles

Every 50-point band from 400 to 1600, with College Board's user percentile, its nationally representative percentile and the ACT match. Jump straight to a score, like 1300 or 1500.

SAT total score percentiles from College Board Research; ACT column from the 2018 ACT/SAT concordance.
SAT totalUser percentileNationally representativeACT match
160099+99+36
155099th99+35
150097th99th34
145095th99th33
140093rd97th31
135089th94th29
130085th91st28
125080th86th26
120075th81st25
115069th74th23
110062nd67th22
105055th58th20
100047th48th19
95039th38th17
90032nd29th16
85024th21st15
80017th14th14
75011th8th13
7006th4th12
6503rd1st11
6002nd1-9
5501st1-Below table
5001st1-Below table
4501-1-Below table
4001-1-Below table

How it works

  1. Enter your total. The checker looks it up in College Board's percentile table, which lists every score from 400 to 1600.
  2. The verdict comes from the user percentile: under 50 is below the middle, 50 to 74 is above average, 75 to 89 is the top quarter, 90 to 94 the top 10 percent, 95 to 98 the top 5 percent, and 99 or higher the top 1 percent. For scale, 691 students scored a perfect 1600 in the class of 2026.
  3. It compares your score with the class of 2026 average of 1045 (College Board, September 29, 2026).
  4. If you add a school's 25th and 75th percentiles, it shows where you fall in that middle 50%. The midpoint of the two is used as a stand-in for the median, so treat that line as approximate.

Worked example. A 1300 is the 85th user percentile and the 91st nationally representative percentile, so it lands in the top quarter. It's 255 points above the 1045 average. Against a school whose middle 50% runs from 1250 to 1450 (approximate midpoint 1350), 1300 sits in the lower half of that range.

Things to know

  • User percentiles compare you with students who actually took the SAT in recent years. College Board bases them on students who graduated in the past three school years (College Board). Nationally representative percentiles estimate where you'd rank among all U.S. juniors and seniors, including students who don't usually test, so they run higher.
  • "Good" really depends on the colleges you want. A score in a school's middle 50% means you look like its admitted students on testing.
  • A percentile is the share of students with scores equal to or lower than yours.

Questions people ask

Why does my score show two percentiles?

College Board publishes two. The user percentile compares you with students who graduated in the past three school years and actually took the SAT. The nationally representative percentile estimates where you'd rank among all U.S. juniors and seniors, including students who don't usually test, so it runs higher. A 1300, for example, is the 85th user percentile and the 91st nationally representative percentile (College Board). For comparing yourself with other applicants, the user percentile is the more useful one.

Is a 1200 SAT score hard to get?

It's well above the middle. A 1200 is the 75th user percentile, meaning 75% of recent test takers scored at or below it, and it's 155 points above the class of 2026 average of 1045 (College Board). How hard it is for you depends on your starting point.

How rare is a 1350 SAT score?

A 1350 is the 89th user percentile and the 94th nationally representative percentile, so roughly one in nine recent test takers scored higher (College Board).

What's the average SAT score?

The class of 2026 averaged 1045, with 528 in Reading and Writing and 517 in Math. More than 1.95 million students in that class took the SAT (College Board, September 29, 2026).

What does a school's middle 50% mean?

It's the range between the 25th and 75th percentile scores of the students who enrolled. Colleges report it in section C9 of their Common Data Set (Common Data Set 2025-2026 template). A quarter of enrolled students scored below the low number and a quarter scored above the high one.

Sources

  1. College Board Research, SAT Nationally Representative and User Percentiles. https://research.collegeboard.org/reports/sat-suite/understanding-scores/sat
  2. ACT and College Board, 2018 ACT/SAT Concordance Tables (PDF). https://act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/ACT-SAT-Concordance-Tables.pdf
  3. College Board Newsroom, class of 2026 SAT results (September 29, 2026). https://newsroom.collegeboard.org/sat-turns-100-nearly-2-million-students-class-2026-take-test
  4. Common Data Set Initiative, CDS 2025-2026 template (PDF). https://commondataset.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/CDS-PDF-2025-2026_PDF_Template.pdf

The "Is my SAT score good?" checker on TutoringForSat.com was built by Cedrick Reese. Percentiles come from College Board Research's SAT percentile table, all 121 total-score rows of which were compared with the source on October 7, 2026. The average is College Board's class of 2026 figure, and the ACT column uses the 2018 ACT/SAT concordance. Both the average and the percentile table are refreshed when College Board publishes new annual data, usually in the fall.