A (Mostly) Brief History of the SAT and ACT Tests
by Erik Jacobsen is licensed under
a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
I'm a private math and physics tutor in
the Basking Ridge,
NJ area. I hold NJ Certificates of Eligibility to teach math and
physics in the public schools. I specialize in SAT and ACT math,
pre-calculus and calculus, and physics.
If you need extra help, or you would like to improve your test scores, or
you have comments or suggestions, you can find
me @ErikTheRedTutor
on Twitter. Or, you can contact me here:
mptutor < at > erikthered.com
(replace the "< at >" with the usual
at-sign).
SAT and ACT are registered trademarks of the College Entrance Examination
Board and ACT, Inc., respectively. Neither company sponsors nor endorses
this web site. Not that such sponsorship wouldn't be nice to have. Yet, I
toil on, producing all this free stuff. Does anyone actually read this tiny
text? :)
This page was last updated on: 2017-04-15.
|
late 1800s |
Average ScoresSAT
(1952–present) Data
| GraphACT
(1970–present) Data
| Graph By the
end of the 19th century, tests for admission to U.S. colleges are specific
to each school. (The arithmetic portion of Harvard's 1869 entrance exam can
be seen here. The corresponding
portion of MIT's 1869 exam can be
seen here. These portions of the two
tests are quite different in difficulty.) The content of the tests varies
widely and can be highly dependent on the interests of the faculty
conducting the exams. It is not unusual for a college to administer exams
on campus a week or two before classes begin. As an alternative to testing,
many colleges, especially in the midwestern U.S., use "admission by
certificate": a high school would be certified by inspectors from the
colleges to have an appropriately preparatory curriculum for college work,
and students graduated from such a high school would be considered to be
adequate without testing. By 1900, however, inspections are infrequent and
college faculty are often not present. |
1899 | The
College Entrance Examination Board (or "College Board") is founded in
December, consisting of a non-profit membership of twelve colleges and
universities. The membership is comprised mostly of elite institutions in
the northeastern U.S., including Columbia, Cornell, Vassar, Barnard, and
New York University. The founders are worried that the lack of uniform
admissions testing and the certificate system places too much control of
college admissions with the high schools. Also, the certificate system is
thought to be conducing students away from the northeastern colleges.
The purpose of the Board is primarily to administer annual examinations in
a variety of subjects thought to be important for college-level work. The
members of the Board could then use the test scores however they chose. The
fee for the test is expected to be $5 (about $136 in 2012 dollars).
At this time, roughly 4% of high school graduates go on to college.
|
1901 | The
"College Boards" are administered in June for the first time to fewer than
1000 students. Roughly 75% of these students are applicants to Columbia
University or Barnard College, hence the practical effect of these tests is
to distinguish excellent students from elite students. The essay tests,
which require five days to complete, are curriculum-based achievement
exams, designed to assess a student's mastery of nine subjects, including
Greek, Latin, and physics. For the price of ten cents, an examinee could
find out from the College Board, before taking the test, the area of
knowledge that each subject test would focus on. (For example, the student
could learn that this year's Greek test would cover the first three books
of Homer's Iliad.) Scoring is done by hand and consists of five ratings
for each subject, from "Excellent" to "Very Poor", with "Doubtful" in the
middle. |
1917 | An
intelligence test developed by Robert Yerkes and other psychologists is
administered to more than 1.5 million U.S. Army recruits. The test, called
the Army "Alpha" exam, uses multiple-choice questions (invented two years
prior) and is designed to help the Army make rapid placement decisions for
prospective soldiers entering World War I. |
1919 | Columbia
University begins allowing prospective students to substitute the results
of an intelligence test (the Thorndike test for "Mental Alertness") for
its regular entrance exams. |
1925 | By
this time, about 20,000 prospective freshmen take the College Board's exams
each year. However, this figure represents only about 10 percent of the
number of students entering college in the U.S. Most colleges continue
either to admit by certificate or use their own entrance exams.
In April, the College Board appoints a commission, headed by Carl Brigham,
to develop a new test designed to measure general intelligence. |
1926 | The
first Scholastic Aptitude Test (or "SAT") is administered on June 23 to
8,040 students, 40% of whom are women. (About 85% of these students
are taking the traditional boards as well.) Carl Brigham, a psychologist
who helped to develop aptitude tests for the U.S. Army during World War I,
is influential in the development of the 1926 test. The SAT is considered a
"new psychological test" and a supplement to, but not a replacement of, the
existing College Boards. Due to the completely different nature of the SAT
compared to the boards, all students are required to take a practice test
before the actual SAT (sample questions below). Five of the nine scored
sub-tests of the first SAT are taken directly or with minor revisions from
Brigham's 1925 "Princeton Psychological Examination", which itself was
derived from the Army Alpha intelligence tests.
Unlike the College Boards, the SAT (administered in June) is designed
primarily to assess aptitude for learning rather than mastery of subjects
already learned. For some college officials, an aptitude test, which is
presumed to measure intelligence, is appealing since at this time
intelligence and ethnic origin are thought to be connected, and therefore
the results of such a test could be used to limit the admissions of
particularly undesirable ethnicities. The test is designed to assess
ability independently of any particular secondary school curriculum, which
has a more mainstream appeal: college admissions testing via the SAT is
uniformly applicable across a wide range of high school students, and the
test is firmly in the control of college officials.
The instructions for the test include the following: The pencil is
preferable to the fountain pen for use in this sort of test. The test
is comprised of nine sub-tests: two math tests (Arithmetical Problems, and
Number Series), and seven verbal tests (Definitions, Classification,
Artificial Language, Antonyms, Analogies, Logical Inference, and Paragraph
Reading).
The mandatory practice test given to students taking the 1926 SAT includes
the following six-choice antonym question (there are six possible pairs of
numbers as answers):
- Which two of the following four words are
opposite or nearly the opposite:
1) obedient; 2) sincere; 3)
dissembling; 4) torpid. An example of a "classification"
question is below (there are twenty possible
answers):- Which three of the following words
are most closely related?
1) bean; 2) potato; 3) carrot; 4) beet; 5)
lettuce; 6) cabbage.
1925 Princeton Test
Five of the
nine sub-tests of the 1926 SAT were minor revisions or verbatim versions of
portions of Carl Brigham's test given to incoming freshmen at Princeton
University in September, 1925. The test, officially called the "Princeton
Psychological Examination", owed much of its content to the Army Alpha test
and other contemporary intelligence examinations.
The Analogies sub-test of the 1926 SAT is taken directly from
Test
3 of the 1925 Princeton test. (See the table below for details of the
content of the first SAT.) Except for the years 1930 to 1935, analogies
will be used on the SAT until 2005. Each analogy question asks the student
to identify a pair of words with the same relationship as a given pair of
words. An example from the 1926 SAT
reads:- Epilepsy is to carpenter as stuttering
is to: 1) tongue; 2) minister; 3) cure; 4) stammering; 5)
fluttering.
A typical "number series" math question on the
1926 SAT asks the student to complete the sequence given by filling in two
numbers at the end. A difficult example from the 1926 practice
test:- Which two numbers come next in the
sequence: 1/8, 1/8, 1/4, 3/4, 3, ?, ?
Other math questions are
open-ended arithmetic word problems, such as the
following:- A boat that can make forty miles an
hour in still water makes a trip of one hundred miles down a certain
stream. If this trip takes two hours, how long will the return trip
take?
(Answers to all of the test questions above appear at
the end of this timeline.)
The original 1926 SAT and successive tests have an "experimental" section
which is used to test new questions and question types. The section does
not count toward the student's score, but it is not identified as the
experimental section, requiring the test taker to apply himself or herself
fully to this part of the test as well. The experimental section is 30
minutes in length until 2005, when it is reduced to 25 minutes. The
structure of the 1926 SAT is shown below. (For a PDF file of each sub-test
of the 1926 SAT, use the title links in the table below.)
Raw scores on all of the sub-tests are combined into a single scaled SAT
score ranging from 200 to 800. The raw scores are scaled so that the
resulting average score is 500 and the standard deviation is 100. Using
this scoring method means that an unusually strong group of students taking
the test could push other students' scores down, unlike the modern
SAT. Also, the scores in a particular year could not be compared with
scores in another year. For example, a student obtaining a score of 600 in
1926 could be significantly weaker than a student obtaining a score of 600
in 1927, if the group of test takers in 1927 happened to be particularly
good students overall compared to 1926.
Scoring of the 1926 SAT is done by hand; the College Board enlists about 30
Princeton and Columbia undergraduates (all men) to do the scoring. Score
reports for more than 99% of test takers are mailed to colleges within
about two weeks of the test day. Although the goal is to make the overall
average score equal to 500, the need to begin mailing score reports before
scoring is complete will result in a final average score of 501. The
average score for men taking the 1926 test is 494; the average score for
the women is 513. (The full report on the administration and scoring of the
1926 SAT is available here.)
The first SAT is very hard for most students to finish: the scored portion
of the test contains 315 questions to be completed in 97 minutes, or about
20 seconds to answer each one. (With 30 minutes for the experimental section
and 22 total minutes of rest time between sub-tests, the total time of the
test is about 2.5 hours.) On average, students taking the 1926 exam
correctly answer only 173 questions. However, by 1929, the scored portion
of the test will contain only six sub-tests and lasts 115 minutes (2 hours
40 minutes total with the experimental section and rest breaks). Subsequent
changes to the test over the next 30 years will continue to make the verbal
portion of the test less "speeded". By 1958, the scored portion of the SAT
will be 2.5 hours in length, with a 30 minute experimental section, for a
total time of 3 hours.
|
1928 | The
Artificial Language and Logical Inference sections are dropped from this
year's SAT (never to appear again). Both math sections are removed from the
test as well.
In this year, juniors (students not expected to enter college until the
following year) are allowed to take the SAT. This change results in 529
juniors taking the SAT in June out of roughly 8300 total test
takers. |
1930 |
Free-response math questions reappear for the 1930 test as a single
sub-test; test takers are expected to solve 80 math questions in 100
minutes. Also, analogies are dropped from the verbal section, so that the
verbal portion of the SAT at this time consists of only three sub-tests:
antonyms, "double definitions", in which sentences are completed by filling
in two blanks from a list of word choices, and paragraph reading.
Previously, the scores for math sub-tests and verbal sub-tests were
combined into a single final score. Starting in this year, a score on a 200
to 800 scale is reported separately for both "verbal aptitude" and "math
aptitude". These scores are not sent to either the student or to his or her
high school: only colleges and universities receive scores at this time.
|
1934 | Eight
years after rejecting the SAT for use in admissions, Harvard begins
requiring all prospective scholarship students to take the SAT. The
president of the university, James Conant, feels that the test provides an
accurate assessment of a student's intelligence. (Conant reasons that the
SAT could then be used by Harvard to select scholarship candidates from
among students other than those from well-known East Coast private
schools.) By 1938, all of the College Board member schools will be using
the SAT to evaluate scholarship applicants. |
1936 | Math
is once again removed from the SAT. (Math ability will be tested separately
and independently on the experimental "Mathematics Attainment Test" from
1936 until 1941.) Analogies are returned to the verbal section.
The rapidly increasing number of applicants to competitive graduate schools
leads William Learned of the Carnegie Foundation and Ben Wood of the
Cooperative Test Service to develop the Graduate Record Examination (GRE)
for use in graduate school admissions. With Carl Brigham's and the College
Board's support, the GRE incorporates the SAT as a portion of the new
exam. The test is first used for 1457 applicants in October 1937 to the
graduate schools of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Like the SAT at
the time, the GRE is considered additional information for the admissions
process and is provided on a voluntary basis by the applicant.
|
1937 | The
College Board's Achievement Tests (officially called "Scholarship Tests")
are administered for the first time to about 2000 students in April. Each
hour-long test is a multiple-choice format assessment of proficiency in
single subjects such as biology, chemistry, Spanish, and social studies,
among others. A student can choose to take one, two, or three of the tests;
the exams are developed by the Cooperative Test Service and funded by the
Carnegie Foundation.
In conjunction with these subject tests, taken in the afternoon, the
students take an SAT in the morning, making this SAT the first to be
nationally administered in April. An April SAT date is appealing to
colleges that want to notify applicants of their admission status earlier
than late July, the earliest practical notification date with the June
exams. The success of the Scholarship Tests will lead the College Board to
offer an April SAT for admission purposes beginning in 1939.
Secondary schools are given the SAT scores of their students for the first
time starting in this year; whether or not students can learn their own
test scores is up to the high school.
At this time, the test fee for the SAT alone is $10 (about $155 in 2012
dollars). However, for the same fee, the traditional boards can be taken
along with the SAT in June. (You can see how the SAT test fee has changed
over the years in this chart.)
|
1938 | The
successful introduction of the GRE leads Ben Wood and William Learned,
among others, to call for a national testing organization that could
consolidate the activities of the various agencies developing standardized
tests. The College Board decides not to participate (effectively quashing
the idea), in part due to the viewpoint of Carl Brigham. Brigham
(in a letter written to James
Conant) says that "premature standardization" would result in the
perpetuation of flawed tests and that sales or marketing concerns would
come to dominate over the scientific desire to experiment with and improve
the tests themselves.
|
1940 | After
a slow growth in acceptance of the SAT during the 1930s, the number of test
takers exceeds 10,000 for the first time in April. (The total number of
U.S. high school graduates in 1940 is roughly 1.1 million, meaning that
only about 1% of these graduates take the SAT.) |
1941 | The
verbal portion of the SAT in this year is curved to an average score of 500
with a standard deviation of 100. To make a score in one year comparable to
a score in another year, all future verbal SAT scores will be linked to
this reference curve, via a process called "equating". For example, a
student obtaining a score of 600 in one year would be considered equivalent
in ability to a student obtaining a score of 600 in any other year. The
same reference curve will be used until March, 1995. One requirement of
equating is the necessity of keeping the SAT content and question types
generally the same from one year to the next going forward. A side effect
of equating is that average SAT scores are no longer fixed to be 500.
In December, administration of the original College Board examinations is
suspended, and the exams are not used again. At this point, the SAT is the
standard admissions test for almost all of the private colleges and
universities in the northeastern United States.
From this time forward, the SAT is entirely machine scored, using a
technique that measures electrical conductivity in the marks made by
pencils.
|
1942 | Math
returns to the SAT in April, in the form of multiple-choice questions with
five-choice answers. To make a score in one year comparable to a score in
another year, all SAT math scores on future exams will be linked to the
curve used on the math section of this year's April exam. The same
reference curve will be used until March, 1995. |
1943 |
The College Board administers an SAT-like test to 316,000 high school
seniors in order to find young men suited to technical jobs in the
U.S. Navy. The single-day administration is larger than any prior one by a
factor of 40. |
1944 | The
G.I. bill for U.S. veterans of World War II is passed into law. Among other
things, the law provides cash assistance to the veterans for college
tuition and board. Over the next 12 years, more than two million veterans
will use these benefits to attend colleges or universities. At the height
of the program in 1947, veterans will account for 49 percent of college
admissions. The large increase in prospective college students and the lack
of a significant competitor in admissions testing will help lead to a
factor of eight increase in SAT test-takers during the 1940s and an
additional factor of ten increase during the 1950s. |
1946 | The
SAT verbal section is changed to consist of antonyms, analogies, sentence
completion, and reading comprehension, with somewhat less emphasis on
"puzzle-like" reasoning questions and more emphasis on reading skills. This
basic format will remain essentially the same for almost the next 60
years. The reading comprehension portions of the test are specifically
considered to be "probably non-coachable".
In Brooklyn, New York, Stanley Kaplan begins teaching SAT prep
classes. Each class consists of 4 hours of instruction per week for 16
weeks, at a cost of $128 per student. (About $1500 in 2012 dollars.)
At this time, the SAT test fee is $5 (about $58 in 2012 dollars).
|
1947 | The
Educational Testing Service (ETS) is founded to consolidate development and
administration of a variety of tests, including the Carnegie Foundation's
Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the AAMC's Medical College Admission
Test (MCAT), and the College Board's SAT. The ETS assumes the testing
activities of the College Board and other related organizations, but the
College Board retains ownership and control of the SAT. To this day, the
ETS develops and administers the SAT and AP tests as a contractor for the
College Board. (The ETS now owns the GRE but is no longer involved with the
MCAT.)
Starting with the April SAT, the number of antonym questions on the verbal
section is significantly reduced to make the test less "speeded" and to
discourage vocabulary "cramming". |
1951 | The
ETS, on behalf of the U.S. Selective Service System, administers an
intelligence test to hundreds of thousands of college students. Those who
score high enough will be deferred from the Korean war draft. Although
there is some criticism of using such a test for draft deferment, the
successful administration of the test establishes a favorable public
perception of the ETS and puts it on solid financial ground. |
1952 | Antonym
questions on the SAT are changed to multiple-choice form with five possible
answers. At this time the SAT consists of five scored sections: two
sections of five-choice math questions, and three sections consisting of
analogies, antonyms, sentence completions, and reading comprehension
questions. About half of the testing time allotted to the verbal section is
devoted to reading questions at this point. The College Board begins to
compute annual average SAT scores among all test takers at this
time. |
1954 | A
guessing penalty is instituted for the scoring of the SAT. Prior to this
time, the instructions for the test stated that the test taker should "work
steadily and as quickly as is consistent with accuracy". The instructions
will now include: "In this test a percentage of the wrong answers will be
subtracted from the number of right answers as a correction for haphazard
guessing." |
1958 | The
number of verbal questions on the SAT is reduced from 107 to 90. This
change is the final step to move the SAT away from a test that was designed
so that few students could finish. The scored portion of the test now
consists of 150 questions and lasts 150 minutes, resulting in one minute
alloted per question. Reading comprehension makes up about 40% of the test
at this time.
Students are allowed to view their own SAT scores for the first
time. |
1959 |
In the summer, the American College Testing (ACT) Program is founded by Ted
McCarrel and E. F. Lindquist. Lindquist suggests that there is a need for a
new regional or national test for college-bound high school students, for
several reasons: 1) the SAT is used primarily by selective colleges in the
northeastern U.S., but not by most public institutions as well as by
universities in other regions of the country; 2) the new test should be
used not just for admissions but placement as well; and, 3) the test should
primarily be useful as an indicator of academic preparation, i.e., it
should be an achievement test.
In November, the ACT Assessment is administered for the first time
to about 75,000 students, and scheduled to be administered four times per
year (in February, April, June, and November) starting in 1960. Based on
 Original 1959 ACT Logo the Iowa
Tests of Educational Development (in fact, all the ACT exam questions for
the first test had been pre-tested on a previous ITED), the test is
comprised of four sections: English, mathematics, social studies, and
natural sciences. Each section is 45 minutes long, for a total test time of
3 hours. Scores are reported on a scale of 1 to 36 for the test as a whole
and for each sub-section. The test administration is primarily limited to
the midwestern U.S at this time; the student's test fee is $3 (about $23 in
2012 dollars). The first ACT test and all successive administrations are
scored by computers using optical mark recognition, at rates of thousands
of test sheets per hour. (Lindquist developed optical mark reader machines
which were in use for scoring the ITED by 1955.)
From the first test on, ACT scores are reported directly to the students as
well as to the colleges. According to the post-test booklet given to
students along with their results, "these few digits, which represent your
scores on ACT, may help you make decisions that will affect many aspects of
your future." However, taking the ACT more than once is not allowed except
under unusual circumstances such as physical illness during the exam
administration.
A new SAT math question type, "data sufficiency", is added. Each question
is accompanied by two statements, and has five possible answers. A sample
question:
Given triangle PQR, can the size of angle P be determined?
(1) PQ=PR
(2) The measure of angle Q is 40 degrees.
A | Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient but statement (2) alone is not
sufficient to answer the question; |
B | Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient but statement (1) alone is not
sufficient to answer the question; |
C | BOTH statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are sufficient to answer the
question, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient; |
D | EACH statement is sufficient by itself to answer the question; |
E | Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient to answer the
question and additional data specific to the problem are needed. |
(The answer appears at the end of this timeline.)
The first Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) is
administered in the fall of this year. The test is a shortened form of the
SAT and is designed to help students become familiar with the question
types and format of the full exam.
At this time, the SAT test fee is $6 (about $47 in 2012 dollars).
|
1961 | The
number of students taking the SAT this year is more than 800,000, roughly
ten times the number taking the test in 1951. The number of students taking
the ACT this year is about 300,000. (For comparison, the total number of
U.S. high school graduates in 1960 is roughly 1.9 million.) |
1965 | The
College Board publishes "Effects of Coaching on Scholastic Aptitude Test
Scores", also known informally as the "little green book". The book states
that coaching for the SAT produces insignificant score increases. (The
average increase attributable to coaching is said to be fewer than ten
points per section.) |
1968 | The
number of students taking the ACT in the 1967-68 school year reaches about
950,000, more than seven times the number taking the test in 1959-60, the
first ACT testing year.
The University of California begins requiring applicants to submit SAT
scores. (Scores will only be used for students whose high school GPAs are
less than 3.1.) Previously, the university had used only high school track
records to determine admission and had rejected the use of the SAT once
before in 1960. However, by the mid 1960s, the post-World War II population
boom made it necessary to reduce the size of the university's eligibility
pool, and the SAT requirement was seen as the most effective way to do
this.
|
1970 | Starting
this year, reported SAT scores are rounded to the nearest number divisible
by ten. Previously, it was possible for students to receive scaled scores
such as 501 or 789, for example. |
1971 | The
National Merit Scholarship Corporation begins co-sponsoring the PSAT, which
is now also called the National Merit Scholarship Qualification Test
(NMSQT). Scores on the PSAT will be used to determine which students will
receive recognition of scholarship and/or scholarship money. |
1972 |
The College Board releases a report on a study done by ETS researchers to
determine the effects, if any, of coaching on SAT math question types. The
researchers found that a 21-hour course of coaching in 7 weeks "produces
both statistically and practically significant score gains on each of the
three mathematics aptitude item formats." The average effective score gains
are "conservatively estimated at about 33 SAT-M [SAT Math] points."
At this time, about 1 million students take the ACT each year. The test is
administered five times per year (including a late July test date), and the
test fee is $6 (about $32 in 2012 dollars).
|
1974 | Beginning
with the October test, several significant changes are made to the SAT. The
number of reading comprehension questions is reduced to about 30% of the
verbal portion of the SAT, in favor of more antonym and analogy questions.
In the math portion of the SAT, data sufficiency questions are
replaced with "quantitative comparison" questions, which have four possible
answers. The quantitative comparison questions ask the student to determine
whether two quantities are equal, different (and which is larger), or
indeterminate. The new questions are thought to be as effective as the data
sufficiency questions, but less complicated and less time consuming.
A sample question:
x percent of y is z , z > 0 |
| |
Column A | Column B |
| |
100 | xy / z |
| |
Choose:
A | if the quantity in Column A is greater; |
B | if the quantity in Column B is greater; |
C | if the two quantities are equal; |
D | if the relationship cannot be determined from the information given. |
(The answer appears at the end of this timeline.)
The total time of the SAT verbal and math portions is reduced from
3 hours to 2.5 hours in order to accommodate the half-hour Test of Standard
Written English (TSWE) that is newly added to the SAT. The TSWE is scored
on a separate scale (20-60) and consists of multiple-choice questions
designed to evaluate grammar and writing skills. The results of the TSWE
are expected to be used by colleges for the appropriate placement of the
test taker in freshman English class.
In order to reduce the possibility of a student cheating by copying
the answers of a nearby student, changes are made in how the test booklets
are distributed. Previously, the five-section SAT had two section
arrangements for each test date, distributed in two booklets. However, each
test administration site would receive only one of the two
arrangements. Starting with the October test, the new six-section SAT has
six section arrangements, distributed in six booklets, in a procedure
called "scrambling". The booklets that each test site receives are
"spiraled": the first student receives the first arrangement, the second
student receives the second arrangement, and so forth. However, by October,
1980, the number of arrangements (and the number of different booklets
needed) will be reduced to three for each test
administration. (See After The Test for
information about how the modern SAT is arranged and distributed.)
|
1975 | The
U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) begins an investigation into the Kaplan
Educational Center, a test preparation company. The FTC is investigating
whether Kaplan is making false claims in its advertising. The Kaplan
advertisements running in Boston say that, on average, Kaplan students
raised their (combined verbal and math) SAT test scores by 100 points.
The number of seniors taking the SAT increases to 996,452 students,
which is about 32% of all graduating seniors at this time. The percent of
seniors taking the SAT at least once will increase to 42% by 1993-94 and
reach a peak of about 49% for the senior class of 2004-05.
The senior class of 1975 is the first in which more girls than boys
take the SAT. Girls will continue to be the majority of SAT test takers
from this point forward. (As of 2015, 53.2% of senior class SAT test takers
are girls.)
|
1977 | The
number of dates on which SAT tests are administered nationally per year in
the U.S. increases to six. |
1978 | The
College Board begins including an entire sample SAT in its handbook (called
"Taking The SAT") given to students. This particular sample test is the
first complete SAT to be made public. The previous handbook (called "About
The SAT") included sample questions, but not an entire test.
At this time, the test fee for the SAT is $8 (about $28 in 2012
dollars). |
1979 | The
FTC releases the final report of its investigation of the ETS, Kaplan, and
other test preparation companies. The report suggests that coaching can
improve SAT scores on average by 50 points (combined math and verbal). In a
re-analysis of the FTC data, the ETS suggests that the result could be due
in whole or part to the increased motivation and desire of students who
choose to be coached, compared to those who do not.
In July, New York State passes the Standardized Testing Act as part of the
Admissions Testing Law, often called the "Truth-In-Testing" law. The law,
to take effect in January, 1980, requires that students taking standardized
tests in New York be allowed to see actual copies of any of their tests and
answer sheets.
In December, the ETS announces that copies of some previously administered
SATs will be released to students nationally, on an ongoing basis.
|
1980 | The
College Board begins selling previously administered SAT tests directly to
students, with the release of the booklet "4 SATs", to be followed by "5
SATs" in 1981 and "6 SATs" in 1982. In 1983, the College Board will begin
regularly publishing tests in books, available nationally in book stores,
called "5 SATs" and "10 SATs".
To comply with the New York truth-in-testing law, the College Board reduces
the total number of SAT administrations in that state from eight to four,
and increases the SAT fee from $8.25 to $10 for New York students. Each
student can receive a copy of the test with his or her answers and
the correct answers, for an additional $4.65.
The number of administrations of the GRE and ACT is also reduced in New
York. In response to the truth-in-testing law, the AAMC decides to have no
administrations of the MCAT in the state. However, by 1996, the law
(New
York Education Law, Title 1, Article 7-A, Section 342) will require
only four SAT administrations per year to be disclosed. Similar exceptions
will be made for the TOEFL and GRE tests, but not for the ACT test. The
MCAT is also excepted and the AAMC is required to disclose only one test
every four years.
|
1981 | The
College Board raises the math scores of nearly a quarter million students
who took the PSAT administered in October, 1980. This PSAT is the first to
be released to the test takers; a student notices that the ETS answer to
one of the math questions (dealing with pyramids) is incorrect.
In March, the College Board decides to provide all students nationally with
copies of their SAT exams and answers, for at least some test
administrations, for a fee of $9.25 (about $25 in 2012 dollars). The new
policy will take effect in the 1981-82 testing year. |
1985 | In
the summer, ACT publishes a 56-page student preparation handbook (titled
"Preparing for the ACT Assessment") which includes a complete sample test
for the first time. |
1986 | In
the 1985-1986 school year, nine students out of about one million test
takers (roughly one in 110,000 test-takers) receive a perfect score of 1600
on the SAT. |
1987 | The
College Board begins its "New Possibilities Project", a multi-year endeavor
to propose and study changes to the Board's testing program, including the
SAT and the Achievement Tests. |
1989 | In
October, a new version of the ACT (called the "Enhanced ACT") is
administered, replacing the previous version of the test. Two major changes
are made: the "Natural Science" sub-test of the ACT is replaced with a
"Science Reasoning" sub-test, and the "Social Studies" sub-test is replaced
with a "Reading" sub-test. The new reading sub-test is designed to be a
better assessment of "pure" reading ability and comprehension, whereas the
social studies sub-test contained items testing, among other things,
specific knowledge of U.S. history. The new science sub-test de-emphasizes
specific scientific knowledge while primarily assessing analytical and
problem-solving skills using reading material, charts, graphs, and tables
drawn from scientific literature.
In addition, changes are made to the existing ACT mathematics and English
sections. The math section will now include trigonometry as well as
pre-algebra (arithmetic) content; the English section will place less
emphasis on grammar and increase content related to testing of writing
skills. The total time of the ACT test will increase from 2 hours and 40
minutes to 2 hours and 55 minutes.
With these changes, the scaled scores on the new ACT test are also
"recentered". Although new scores will still be reported on the same 1-36
scale that has been used since the first ACT test in 1959, the recentering
means that the scores for the previous test will not be directly comparable
to scores for the new test. The change increases the average composite
score from 18.6 for 1989 seniors (old scale) to 20.6 for 1990 seniors (new
scale):
Seniors | Average ACT Scores |
Class Year | Composite | Mathematics | English |
1988 | 18.8 | 17.2 | 18.5 |
1989 | 18.6 | 17.1 | 18.4 |
1990 | 20.6 | 19.9 | 20.5 |
1991 | 20.6 | 20.0 | 20.3 |
At this time, roughly one million students (juniors and seniors) take the
ACT each year, whereas about 1.2 million students take the SAT. (For
comparison, the total number of U.S. high school graduates in 1990 is
roughly 2.5 million. About 40% of all high-school graduates in the
U.S. take the SAT in this year.) |
1990 | In
this year, ten students out of 1.2 million test takers (roughly one in
120,000 students) get perfect scores of 1600 on the SAT.
At this time, the test fee for the SAT is $16 (about $28 in 2012
dollars).
In October, a report is released by a
commission established by the College Board to review the proposed changes
to be made to the SAT as part of the Board's "New Possibilities
Project". The commission recommends that the SAT should: "do more than
predict college grades", "reinforce the growth of sound high school
curricula", and "approximate more closely the skills used in college and
high school work". The commission also recommends that the acronym "SAT"
used for the testing program be changed from "Scholastic Aptitude Test" to
"Scholastic Assessment Test", in order to "convey a breadth sufficient to
encompass the changes in format and purpose". The commission does not
recommend adding a written essay to the SAT, as was expected, but instead
advises that a mandatory essay be made part of a new writing Achievement
test (to be called "SAT II - Writing").
|
1991 | In
June, calculators are allowed for the first time on a new version of the
Math Level II Achievement Test, which is called the "Math Level IIC
Achievement Test". Students are given the option of taking the standard
(non-calculator) Level II Test; the Level I Test remains a non-calculator
test. The scaled score range for the Level IIC test is the same (200-800)
as the Level II test, even though scores from the II and IIC exams are not
comparable. (In other words, a score of 500 on the Level II test does not
reflect the same skill level in math as a score of 500 on the Level IIC
test. According to the College Board, "the abilities and skills measured by
the two tests are not identical".)
|
1993 | The
SAT is renamed from "Scholastic Aptitude Test" to "SAT I: Reasoning Test",
and the Achievement Tests are renamed "SAT II: Subject Tests". The first
renamed tests will be administered in March, 1994. Collectively, according
to the College Board, these tests are to be known as "Scholastic Assessment
Tests" (plural), and the acronym "SAT" is no longer considered to stand for
anything. However, for at least the next three years, the Reasoning Test is
commonly called the "Scholastic Assessment Test" (singular).
The president of the College Board says that the renaming is designed "to
correct the impression among some people that the SAT measures something
that is innate and impervious to change regardless of effort or
instruction."
|
1994 |
Significant changes are made to the SAT starting with the March
test. Antonyms are removed from the verbal section to make rote
memorization of vocabulary less useful. (For a list of the antonym words
used in 45 SAT tests from 1977 to 1990,
see this PDF file.) The percent of
content devoted to passage-based reading material is increased from about
30% to about 50%, and the reading comprehension sub-sections are renamed
"Critical Reading". The reading passages are chosen to be more like typical
college-level reading material, compared to previous SAT reading
passages.
The TSWE is dropped from the SAT at this time; this test reappears
as part of the SAT II Writing Test, which also includes a short essay. The
time allocated to the math and verbal portions increases by 15 minutes
each, keeping the SAT three hours in length and decreasing the impact of
speed on test performance.
Three major changes are made to the math section of the SAT: the
tested math content is expanded, free-response questions are added, and
students are now allowed to use calculators. These changes are made in
response to the suggestions of the NCTM, which in an influential 1989
report had emphasized the use of the "real-world" problems, probability and
statistics, and calculators in the K-12 math curriculum. At this time, the
tested math material is expanded to include: questions with more than one
correct answer (via the free-response section); data interpretation,
including pie charts, bar graphs, and scatterplots; slopes of lines;
probability; the concepts of median and mode; logic problems; and, counting
and ordering problems.
|
1995 | Starting
with the April SAT, scaled scores are "recentered". By the early 1990s, the
average SAT verbal scores were about 425 and the average SAT math scores
were about 475. The table below shows average SAT scores for seniors
graduating in the listed class year:
Seniors | Average SAT Score |
Class Year | Math | Verbal |
1952 | 494 | 476 |
1962 | 495 | 474 |
1972 | 484 | 453 |
1982 | 467 | 426 |
1992 | 476 | 423 |
1996 | 508 | 505 |
(For all of the yearly average SAT scores from 1952 to the present,
including SAT scores on the original (pre-1995) scale,
see this PDF file for the
data and this PDF file
for a plot.) The recentering is done in order to return the average scores
of the verbal and math sections closer to each other and closer to the
midpoint of the scale (500), as seen in the last line of the table
above. Although new scores will still be reported on the same 200-800
scale, the recentering means that the old test scores (prior to April 1995)
will not be directly comparable to later scores. For example, a May 1995
score of 600 in math will not reflect the same ability level as a May 1994
score of 600 in math.
The primary problem with the pre-1995 scale is that test scores are still
linked to the 1941 and 1942 reference groups of students, and the
test-taking population changed significantly in the decades after World War
II. Mathematically, this meant that it was not unusual, especially for
verbal section scales, to have a perfect raw score correspond to a scaled
score of less than 800. (The scoring policy, however, was to award an 800
for a perfect raw score.) A group of about one million seniors in the class
of 1990 is chosen to be the reference group for the new scale.
Another effect of the recentering of SAT scores is a significant increase
in the number of students achieving a perfect score of 1600. Previous to
the new scaling, a single mistake or question left blank would result in a
score of less than 1600. Starting with the April, 1995, SAT test, students
can miss as many as four questions and still get a perfect 1600. In 1994,
25 students got perfect scores out of about 1.25 million (about 1 in 50,000
students). The first recentered SAT in April has 137 perfect scores out of
about 200,000 test takers (about 1 in 1,400 students).
The number of dates on which SAT tests are administered nationally per year
in the U.S. increases to seven when the October test date is made available
in all states. (The dates of all past regular SAT administrations can be
found in this PDF file.)
|
1996 | In
September, the ACT (both the test and the company) is renamed so that "ACT"
is no longer an acronym: the letters "ACT" no longer stand for anything.
Starting in October, calculators are allowed for use by students on the
math section of the ACT test.
|
1997 | The
College Board, in an attempt to clear up confusion about the naming of the
SAT, says that the SAT by itself is not properly called the "Scholastic
Assessment Test". Instead, the term "SAT" is not to be considered an
acronym: the letters "SAT" no longer stand for anything.
In the fall, the PSAT/NMSQT is updated to include a 30-minute,
multiple-choice writing skills section based in part on the
now-discontinued TSWE. The four additional sections on the PSAT are
decreased in time from 30 minutes to 25 minutes in order to keep the length
of the test roughly the same. PSAT scores remain on a scale of 20 to 80,
and three scores are now reported: Verbal, Math, and Writing. The National
Merit qualifying scores are now calculated using the sum of the three
scores, with a top score of 240. (Previously, the verbal score was doubled
and added to the math score resulting in the same top score.)
Online registration for the ACT test via the Internet is made
available. |
1999 | At
this time, the test fee for the SAT is $23 (about $31 in 2012
dollars). |
2001 | Concerned
that the SAT is not nearly as good a predictor of college success as either
high-school grades or the SAT II Subject Tests, the president of the
University of California suggests dropping the SAT I as a consideration in
UC admissions. Criticisms of the SAT at this time also include the apparent
disconnection between what high-school students are learning in their
course work and "esoteric" items on the SAT such as verbal analogies and
quantitative comparison questions. |
2002 |
Beginning with the October test date, "Score Choice" for the SAT II Subject
Tests is dropped. Previously, a student could decide whether a Subject Test
score would be sent to a college or university. After the change, all
scores of any tests taken are sent, matching the policy of the SAT
I. |
2003 | The
last version of the "10 SATs" books (the third edition of "10 Real SATs")
is published by the College Board. A similar book (with ten or even five
previously administered SATs) has not been published since. (As of this
writing.)
The College Board awards Pearson Educational Measurement with a contract to
scan answer sheets and grade the essay on the new SAT (announced in
2002). The Pearson contract, along with the new SAT, will begin in 2005.
|
2004 | The
SAT is again renamed, dropping the roman numerals, so that the official
names are "SAT Reasoning Test" and the "SAT Subject Tests". |
2005 | Beginning
with the March SAT, the content of the test is changed, at least partly in
response to the UC criticisms. The "Verbal Reasoning" section of the SAT is
renamed "Critical Reading", and the verbal analogy questions are
dropped. The new reading section includes short passages (fewer than 20
lines) as well as the traditional longer reading selections. Newly added is
a writing skills section, with essay, based on the now discontinued SAT
Subject Writing Test. Three SAT scores, for Critical Reading, Math, and
Writing, each on a scale of 200-800, are reported, making the perfect score
2400 instead of 1600.
In SAT Math, quantitative comparison questions are dropped. Several new
topics are added: exponential growth; absolute value; functional notation;
equations of lines; rational and radical equations; and, manipulation of
fractional and negative exponents. (The rational and radical equations as
well as the fractional and negative exponents are added to reflect content
from typical third-year high-school algebra courses.) Greater emphasis is
placed on linear functions, and properties of tangent lines.
To accommodate the new writing section and essay, the total time of the SAT
(including a 25-minute equating section) increases to 3 hours and 45
minutes. The test fee for the SAT increases to $41.50 (about $47 in 2012
dollars), from $29.50 just two years before. (You can see how the SAT test
fee has changed over the years in this chart.)
About 300,000 students take the first "new" SAT in March, with 107 of them
(roughly 1 in 2,800 students) receiving a perfect score of 2400.
The ACT test adds a 30-minute writing section, beginning with the
February administration; the section is optional for test takers. With the
writing section, the total time of the ACT test increases to 3 hours and 25
minutes.
|
2006 | In
March, the College Board announces that about 5,000 of the half-million SAT
tests taken in October 2005 were incorrectly scored. (Most of the errors
resulted in reported scores lower than what students actually scored.) The
testing company that scores the exams, Pearson Educational Measurement,
says that the errors were due in part to excessive moisture when the
answers sheets were scanned.
Out of 1.38 million seniors taking the SAT, 238 (roughly 1 in 5,000
students) receive a perfect score of 2400. In 2004, approximately the same
number of seniors took the SAT, and 939 (about 1 in 1,500 students)
received a perfect score of 1600.
In comparison, 216 seniors in the class of 2006 out of 1.21 million
taking the ACT (about 1 in 5,600 students) receive a perfect composite
score of 36.
|
2007 | The
ACT becomes a valid admissions test at every four-year college or
university in the U.S. when Harvey Mudd College accepts ACT scores for fall
admissions. |
2009 |
"Score Choice" for the SAT is returned, beginning with the March test
date. Under this policy, students are allowed to report any or all of the
SAT or SAT Subject Tests that they take, depending on the admissions
criteria of the recipient colleges. (However, the honor system is used: no
verification is made by the College Board that a student reports all scores
to a college that has an "all scores" policy.) Previously, all SAT and SAT
Subject scores would be reported. |
2010 | For
the first time since the ACT test has been administered, the number of high
school seniors taking the ACT (1.57 million) is greater than those taking
the SAT (1.55 million). (See the
table below. At this time, the
College Board counts only those seniors taking the SAT no later than March
of their senior year.)
In December, the College Board stops selling unused test booklets from
prior PSAT administrations. Previously, the booklets were available
directly from the College Board store for $3 each. |
2011 | The
College Board revises its SAT statistics to include those seniors taking
the test as late as June of their graduation year, as opposed to March, the
previous cutoff date. This change has the effect of both reducing mean SAT
scores and increasing the number of seniors included in the statistics.
* Includes seniors taking the SAT as late as June of their senior year.
Seniors | Taking the SAT or ACT |
Average SAT Reading Score |
Class Year | SAT | ACT | previous | revised* |
2007 | 1,494,531 | 1,300,599 | 502 | 501 |
2008 | 1,518,859 | 1,421,941 | 502 | 500 |
2009 | 1,530,128 | 1,480,469 | 501 | 499 |
2010 | 1,547,990 | 1,568,835 | 501 | 500 |
2011 | 1,647,123* | 1,623,112 | N/A | 497 |
2012 | 1,664,479* | 1,666,017 | N/A | 496 |
|
2012 |
Even using the College Board's revised accounting methods, the number of
seniors taking the ACT surpasses the number taking the SAT. (For charts
showing the number and percent of seniors taking the SAT and ACT tests over
the last 20 years,
see this PDF file.)
For the first time since 1963, an SAT is scheduled to be administered in
August. The test administration is to be available only to people enrolled
in a test preparation program for gifted students at Amherst
College. However, the College Board later cancels the August test date,
calling it "inappropriate".
Starting with the October tests, new security measures intended to reduce
cheating are put into place for the SAT and ACT. Students are now required
to submit a photo and high school code when registering for an exam. The
high school will receive the scores for each student and will be provided
access to the student's submitted photo for verification
purposes. |
2013 | In
February, the College Board announces that the SAT will be redesigned "so
that it better meets the needs of students, schools, and colleges at all
levels." The time frame and details of the changes are not provided. (In
August, the president of the College Board says that the new SAT will debut
in 2015.)
In May, ACT Inc. announces that a computer-based version of the ACT test
will be made available starting in the spring of 2015 for schools that
administer the ACT during the school day. The new version will retain the
same content as the paper version of the test, which will remain available
for the time being. The computer tests, to be administered via the
Internet, will optionally include questions requiring the student to
produce his or her own answers, along with the traditional multiple-choice
items.
Starting with the graduating class of 2013, ACT Inc. begins including both
standard-time and extended-time test takers in its annual report. This
change has the effect of both reducing mean ACT scores and increasing the
number of seniors included in the statistics. More than fifty percent of
graduating seniors taking either the SAT or ACT are now taking the ACT
test.
* Includes both standard-time and extended-time seniors taking the ACT.
Class Year | Number Of Seniors | Average ACT Score |
English | Math | Reading | Science | Composite |
2011 | 1,623,112 | 20.6 | 21.1 | 21.3 | 20.9 | 21.1 |
2012 | 1,666,017 | 20.5 | 21.1 | 21.3 | 20.9 | 21.1 |
2013 | 1,727,041 | 20.4 | 21.0 | 21.3 | 20.9 | 21.0 |
2013* | 1,799,243 | 20.2 | 20.9 | 21.1 | 20.7 | 20.9 |
In December, the College Board announces that the revised SAT will appear
in the spring of 2016, one year later than expected. The correspondingly
revised PSAT is scheduled for October, 2015.
|
2014 |
In March, some details of the upcoming changes to the SAT are revealed. The
essay is to be made optional and scored separately, reverting the maximum
combined score back to 1600; the guessing penalty will be eliminated;
calculators will no longer be allowed for some of the math sections; the
range of math content areas will be reduced; each test will include a
reading passage "drawn from the Founding Documents or the Great Global
Conversation"; some reading passages on each test will be accompanied by
tables or graphs; and, the SAT will be available in both paper-and-pencil
form as well as on a computer.
In May, the New York legislature introduces
a bill
that would allow ACT Inc. to disclose at most four regular ACT test forms
administered in New York to those taking the tests. (ACT Inc. currently
must divulge all regular ACT test forms administered in New York.) The bill
would provide an allowance similar to that given to the College Board
by New
York Education Law, Title 1, Article 7-A, Section 342. (The bill has
not become law in spite of having been reintroduced several times to the
New York State Assembly. The most recent attempt
is here.)
In June, ACT Inc. announces changes to the ACT test which are to go into
effect sometime in 2015. Students will receive new scores or "indicators",
along with the usual individual and composite scores, describing
performance in categories such STEM, career readiness, English language
arts, and text complexity. In addition, the optional writing portion of the
test is increased in duration from 30 minutes to 40 minutes. The new essay
prompt includes three different perspectives on an issue which the student
is asked to evaluate and compare with his or her own perspective.
|
2016 |
In February, the College Board publishes upcoming test dates for the next
three years, effectively announcing that a nationwide summer SAT test
administration will be provided, beginning in the August just prior to the
2017-2018 school year. (The last August tests to be administered were in
the early 1960s.) The August test is to replace the January administration.
In March, the redesigned version of the SAT is administered, with
approximately 280,000 test takers registered to take the Saturday exam.
Less than a week before the March test date, the College Board transfers
some test takers to the next SAT administration in May, citing security
reasons. Registrants "identified as those likely to be taking the test for
other purposes" than to apply to a college or university, or to apply to a
scholarship or financial aid program that requires a college admissions
test, are the ones transferred. In April, the College Board clarifies the
policy, saying that such registrants may take the SAT "only during
administrations where the SAT form is disclosed after the test." (These
administrations are January, May, and October for U.S. registrants.)
|
|