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Are you looking for ultra high precision SAT percentiles?  I've calculated SAT percentiles to 6 digits of precision (and yes every digit can help especially if you're at the high end), with data updated for 2016.  

Recap: What Are SAT Score Percentiles?

If you need a refresher on what an SAT percentile is, I highly recommend this excellent article on how to think of SAT percentiles. In short, your SAT percentile ranking tells you how you did compared to everyone else. If you have a 65 percentile (sometimes spelled %tile), you scored better than 65% of students. Your percentile score is not at all like a test score out of 100 -- a test score usually refers to the fraction of questions you got right while a percentile represents the fraction of other students you beat.

What Are the Percentile Ranges for the SAT?

Most charts, including ones from the College Board itself, only give percentiles to two digits of precision. This leads to a lot of silly tables. For example, on the official College Board table, a ton of scores map to 99th percentile.  In fact, the 19 scores from 2220 to 2400 inclusive map to 99%.

This just isn't enough precision for many purposes.  For example, scoring a 2400 means you're in the top one out of 5000 test takers, whereas scoring a 2220 means you're the top one out of just 66 students -- yet both map to a 99 percentile.  If you're scoring near the top of the range, knowing high precision percentiles is very helpful.  

Even for students scoring less than near-perfect, higher precision can help. If you're competitive and want to get into a good college, every percent matters (just take a look at sports -- races are won by a hundredth of a second).  Suppose you find out you improved from 50th percentile to 51st percentile. This could be just a small jump from 50.4 to 50.5, or it could be a massive leap from 49.5 to 51.4.  One is nineteen times larger than the other. In other words, higher precision helps you understand more.

Without further ado, Here is the table, with data released from 2016:

Old SAT Scores, Imputed New SAT Scores, and High Precision 6-Digit Percentiles

Methodology: How did we calculate the percentiles?  We used real official data released by the College Board on the exact number of students who earned a certain score. Then, we summed the exact number of students (not a survey, not an estimate, the exact number of students to the single individual) to get the percentile. Within a score group (e.g. those scoring exactly 2110), we presume exactly half are above, and half are below, so that 600 does not correspond to 0.0000 percentile, nor does a perfect 2400 correspond to 100.0000 percentile exactly. 

Do the Percentiles Change Year to Year?

Within the old SAT, the percentiles have not changed much at all year to year in the last few years of administration.  In other words, from about January 2013 to January 2016 inclusive, the old SAT percentiles have remained the same. Therefore, you can use any of the 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 years for each other. However, you should not use very early years (e.g. 2005) because the test does suffer from some long-term drift.  

A note about the current (new) SAT vs. the old SAT. The table above is from the old SAT, with imputed new SAT scores. This means the new SAT scores are NOT from the new SAT directly. They are calculated from how we would mathematically, linearly, think about new SAT scores from old SAT scores. This is good enough if you want a rough mapping between the two. However, if you are looking for exactness, the above table is most useful for the old SAT, and I would wait for new SAT data to be released (likely 2017) to calculate an exact new SAT table -- no one has that data yet!

What’s Next?

Now that you know the ins and outs of national percentiles, check out what the average SAT scores are or take a look at the average SAT scores in your state.

Trying to figure out your SAT target score? Or maybe you’ve taken the SAT, but you’re not sure if your score makes you competitive. Check out our guide to SAT scores to help you develop your personal target score using the colleges you want to apply to.

Reaching for the stars? Check out what a good SAT score for the Ivy League looks like.