The SAT has long been a rite of passage for high school students aiming to attend college in the United States. For years, students have been told to aim for a “good” score on the exam, but what does that really mean? What qualifies as a “good” SAT score depends heavily on which colleges you are applying to. It’s time we acknowledge that the idea of a “good” score is not set in stone but is relative and contingent on the type of school you want to attend and the academic standards of those institutions.

What Your Target School’s Academic Profile Says About Your SAT Score

As a general rule of thumb, you should shoot for an SAT score at or above the median SAT score for admitted students at your dream school. This information can be gleaned from a quick internet search of the academic profile of admitted students. For Ivy League admission, the middle 50% of SAT scores and median scores for admitted students are as follows:

SAT and ACT Scores in Recently Admitted Ivy League Cohorts	SAT 25th Percentile	SAT Median	SAT 75th Percentile
Brown University	1510	1540	1560
Columbia University	1500	1540	1560
Cornell University	1480	1520	1550
Dartmouth College	1440	1520	1560
Harvard University	1500	1550	1580
University of Pennsylvania	1500	1540	1570
Princeton University	1510	1540	1570
Yale University	1500	1540	1560

Have your sights set on Princeton, Yale, or Harvard? You had better have an SAT score in the 1500s if you want admissions officers to seriously consider your application. However, the vast majority of schools in the United States don’t hold their admitted students to such rigorous academic standards.

Understanding SAT Scores and College Selectivity

Colleges and universities are generally divided into tiers based on selectivity. Highly selective schools tend to have a smaller acceptance rate, with many applicants vying for a limited number of spots. These institutions require students to demonstrate not just intelligence but exceptional potential, and an SAT score of 1400 or above might be considered competitive, if not borderline essential.

Meanwhile, less selective schools, particularly state schools or colleges that offer rolling admissions, often have higher acceptance rates and might be satisfied with an SAT score of anywhere between 1200 and 1400. For these institutions, your application might stand out more in terms of your personal story, activities, and demonstrated passion for learning rather than just standardized testing.

This stark difference in SAT expectations makes it clear that there is no single benchmark for what is considered a good score. What matters more than the raw score itself is how it stacks up against the admissions landscape of the schools you’re applying to.

The Reality of Test Optional Policies in Admissions

The rise of test-optional policies at many colleges has further complicated the question of what constitutes a “good” SAT score. As more schools — particularly those that are selective — adopt test-optional admissions, students no longer feel the same pressure to submit SAT scores if they don’t think their performance will help their application. But take it from us — students who don’t submit a standardized test score in their application are at a significant disadvantage!

College admissions officers don’t want you to know this secret. Their job is to drive up applications (and thus, drive down their acceptance rates) by misleading students into applying without submitting any test scores. But these students will never have a leg up over the students who submit strong test scores.

Bo Knows Baseball. Ivy Coach Knows SAT Tutoring

The best case scenario, of course, is that you submit test scores and that they are highly competitive. That’s where Ivy Coach comes in. Our Senior Tutor, Dr. Fran Bigman, has been coaching students to secure top SAT scores for many years with a highly personalized tutoring practice that optimizes scores and your child’s odds of elite college admission. Simply fill out Ivy Coach’s complimentary consultation form to get started with us, and we’ll be in touch.