The SAT exam is a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), a nonprofit organization, was the first to develop it. The SAT exam is still administered ETS, but it is published and owned the College Board, a non-profit organization. SAT stands for Scholastic Aptitude Test, which was later changed to Scholastic Assessment Test, but the official name of the test is now the SAT Reasoning Test.
All colleges now accept the SAT for admissions, though some still require applicants to take the ACT, which stands for American College Testing Program. The ACT exam was once more popular in the Midwest and South, while the SAT exam was more popular on the East and West coasts, but the SAT is now the national standard. The SAT is optional for admission at some schools.
Critical Reading, Mathematics, and Writing are the three sections of the SAT exam, each of which is graded on a scale of 200 to 800, with a maximum possible score of 2400. The minimum score that colleges accept for applicants varies. The total timed test materials for the SAT exam are three hours and 45 minutes. The SAT also includes a 25-minute experimental section that is used to normalize questions for future exams but does not affect the test-score. taker’s Most administrations of the test take about four and a half hours, including orientation, biographical section completion, and timed breaks.
The SAT Critical Reading section has two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section, all of which consist of multiple-choice sentence completion and reading comprehension questions. There are two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section in the Mathematics section. All of the questions are multiple choice, with the exception of ten “grid-in” questions in one of the 25-minute sections, which require the test-taker to write in an answer. Questions in both the Critical Reading and Mathematics sections of the exam become more difficult toward the end of each section.
In March of 2005, the Writing section of the SAT exam was added to the test. It is divided into two sections: a 25-minute essay and a 35-minute multiple-choice section that assesses the ability to improve sentences and paragraphs as well as identify grammatical errors. The test-taker must write a short essay in response to a prompt in the essay section. The essay is graded on a scale of one to six, with off-topic essays receiving a zero, and it accounts for 30% of the overall Writing score.