Decoding your Digital SAT score report

Resources for interpreting Digital SAT Score reports:

With the first scores from the very first administration of the Digital SAT having been released, we hope the following guide will help you understand how to find and interpret your student’s results.

This guide will explain how to find and interpret your score report. Additionally, there are two resources you may find useful. The first is College Board’s official Handout on SAT Score Reports. Additionally, the video below provides a quick run-through (only 3 minutes) of the material contained in the blog post below. It will show you how to access and interpret the score report.

How to find your score report:

Step 1: log in to your student’s College Board account. Scroll down to the “My Scores” section, where you will find both score results from administrations of the Digital SAT as well as practice test results from BlueBook.

Note: Click on the blue arrow on the right to navigate to a summer screen of your test scores.

Step 2: After clicking on the blue arrow, you will be presented with a set of test administrations (and/or practice test scores) to scroll through. After finding the test you are trying to access, click on “Score Details” in the yellow tab.

Click on “Score Details” to navigate to the score summary and sub-scores details screen.

Step 3: You will then see a summary screen showing a score breakdown for the test you are viewing. This will show you your student’s main score, their percentile ranking, and representations of their performance on both halves of the test: Reading and Writing + Math.

This student’s main score is 1120. Note to the right their percentile score is 75th. The students sub-section scores are indicated underneath the main score: a 620 on the Reading and Writing and a 500 on the Math. The “Knowledge and Skills” tab on the right shows a breakdown of how your student performed on each sub-section.

Interpreting the “Knowledge and Skills” section

Underneath the Reading and Writing section, you will see four competencies. Each competency features a percentage—this does not indicate the percentage of questions your student answered correctly. It indicates how much weight each competency has (how many questions it involves) out of the total number of questions on the test.

  • Information & Ideas

  • Craft & Structure

  • Expression of Ideas

  • Standard English Conventions

Underneath the Math section, you will see four competencies:

  • Algebra

  • Advanced Math

  • Problem Solving & Data Analysis

  • Geometry & Trigonometry

The shaded bars underneath each competency do not indicate how many questions are right or wrong. Rather, each of the seven “bars” represents about 15% of the total number of questions in this competency.

Example: If your student has three out of seven bars shaded in the “Standard English Conventions” competency, it means they scored roughly 45% of these questions correctly.

What the score report does not include…

The new score reports, viewable online and downloadable as a PDF, will not have many of the pieces of information accessible when taking the ACT or the old Paper SAT.

  • No raw score: no element of the score report shows the number of right/incorrect answers.

  • No questions: no part of the score report (PDF or online) will show you any questions the student got incorrect. Accessing the score report online, though, will give you access to sample questions in the category. CollegeBoard will also prompt you to pertinent practice questions on Khan Academy.

Roni LaBarbera