worth finding out whether the colleges you’re applying to use the SAT II tests for this
purpose.
Scoring the SAT II Subject Tests
There are three different versions of your SAT II score. The “raw score” is a simple score
of how you did on the test, like the grade you might receive on a normal test in school.
The “percentile score” compares your raw score to all the other raw scores in the country,
letting you know how you did on the test in relation to your peers. The “scaled score,”
which ranges from 200 to 800, compares your score to the scores received by all students
who have ever taken that particular SAT II.
The Raw Score
You will never know your SAT II raw score because it is not included in the score report.
But you should understand how the raw score is calculated because this knowledge can
affect your strategy for approaching the test.
A student’s raw score is based solely on the number of questions that student got right,
wrong, or left blank:
- You earn 1 point for every correct answer
- You lose^1 / 4 of a point for each incorrect answer
- You receive zero points for each question left blank
Calculating the raw score is easy. Count the number of questions answered correctly and
the number of questions answered incorrectly. Then multiply the number of wrong
answers by^1 / 4 , and subtract this value from the number of right answers.
raw score = right answers - (^1 / 4 wrong answers)
The Percentile Score
A student’s percentile is based on the percentage of the total test takers who received a
lower raw score than he or she did. Let’s say, for example, you had a friend named Gregor
Mendel, and he received a score that placed him in the 93rd percentile. That percentile
tells Gregor that he scored better on the SAT II than 92 percent of the other students who
took the same test; it also means that 7 percent of the students taking that test scored as
well as or better than he did.
The Scaled Score
ETS takes your raw score and uses a formula to turn it into the scaled score of 200 to 800
that you’ve probably heard so much about.
The curve to convert raw scores to scaled scores differs from test to test. For example, a
raw score of 33 on the Biology might scale to a 600, while the same raw score of 33 on the
Chemistry will scale to a 700. In fact, the scaled score can even vary between different
editions of the same test. A raw score of 33 on the February 2004 Math IIC might scale to
a 710, while a 33 in June 2004 might scale to a 690. These differences in scaled scores
exist to accommodate varying levels of difficulty and student performance from year to
year.