If you’re applying to college sometime in the future, you’ll likely be thinking about how high you need to score on the SAT or ACT in order to get accepted to your college of choice. Which might reasonably make you wonder, in turn:
How does the Digital SAT actually get scored, anyways?
Not all tests are graded in the same way—in fact, few are!—and the details of the College Board’s scoring method may determine quite a bit about your college future.
This is also worth digging into because the College Board’s approach to scoring the SAT changed significantly when the test transformed from a paper-based to a fully digital test a few years back.
Never fear: today’s post will clearly explain how your points are tallied on the Digital SAT…so that you can use that knowledge to grab more of those precious points.
ARTICLE CONTENTS:
1. Watch this article as a video
2. Basic structure of the Digital SAT
3. How computer-adaptive technology affects your score
a. Why did they make the new SAT computer-adaptive?
4. Does every question count towards your score?
5. Explained examples of how the DSAT is scored
b. Low score
6. Digital SAT Grading Formulas
a. SAT score chart: Reading and Writing
7. Conclusion
Video version of this article:
How is the Digital SAT structured?
It would be hard to understand the SAT’s scoring system without understanding three basic elements first.
The first of these fundamentals is the birds-eye breakdown of the test.
The Digital SAT consists of two sections: the Reading + Writing (RW) section and the Math section.
Each of these two sections are further divided into two modules apiece:
The RW section’s two modules each have 27 questions. That means you're going to have 54 questions total in Reading + Writing.
The Math section is also divided into two separate modules, each with 22 questions in it. So, that's going to be a total of 44 questions for the Math section.
The modules each contain the same types of questions, in roughly the same order. So in the RW modules, you will have questions that test your reading and your writing skills (all integrated within the same module; the skills of reading and writing are not separated out into different sections or modules, like they were on the paper SAT) in Module 1, and you will have Reading and Writing questions—again, all integrated together—in Module 2.
In the Math modules, all the topics are blended together; there’s no predicting which type of Math question will crop up where. However, each module tends to go from easiest to hardest, roughly. So, Module 1 of your Math section will mostly progress from easy questions to hard questions, and Module 2 does the same.
Depending on how you perform on Module 1 of either section, you may get an easier or a harder Module 2.
That, my friends, is the basic outline of the Digital SAT.
How your second SAT module is affected by your first
Remember how I said that your RW Module 2 might be overall easier or harder than the RW Module 1 you got? And that the same is true of your Math modules?
Well, that’s because the Digital SAT uses what they call computer adaptive technology. Basically, this means that the difficulty level of your second module is determined by your performance in the first module (how many questions you answered correctly).
Let’s look at what that means in real-life terms. Suppose that in your first Reading + Writing module you encountered, you were to get approximately two thirds or more questions correct—so let's call that roughly 18 or more questions—then you would probably get a more difficult Module 2. If, on the other hand, you got fewer than 18 correct in that first RW module, you'd probably get the easier Module 2.
(Please note—these are rough approximations. It might be that it's 19 questions or more correct, depending on the test; or the cut-off point might be below 18 correct questions. Even those of us who are test prep experts don’t know the exact number—though we do make very well-educated guesses.)
Why did they change the Digital SAT to make it computer adaptive?
The benefit of having the new version of the test change in response to how well you’re doing is that this version of the test takes less time overall.
Thus, instead of embarking on a somewhat exhausting three- or four-hour journey, as you had to with the paper exam, you now get to finish the thing in two hours and 14 minutes (if you're a regular time test-taker). Today’s test still carefully evaluates your skills, but it does so in a way that is more time-efficient.
Getting some of your Saturday or Sunday morning back—who can argue with that?
Does every question impact your score on the computer-based SAT?
Now that you grasp the structure of the digital SAT, and you get how this whole computer adaptive technology thing works, there's one more core trait you need to learn about in order to fully understand how the test is scored…and it might come as a bit of a surprise:
some questions on the DSAT do not affect your final score.
Are you serious?! I am indeed. In each of your four modules (distributed across the RW and Math sections), there are going to be two questions that get thrown out entirely.
If you got them right, you're not going to get a point. It doesn't count. Sad! But of course, that also means if you happen to get one or both of those questions wrong…they don't count against your score, either. Yay.
Unfortunately, you will never know which two questions the decoys are, so you have to take every last question seriously.
Why has the College Board chosen to do this?
The truth is, none of us who live outside the mysterious inner workings of the College Board have the answer to this. Maybe the test is designed this way so they can try out sample questions on the student population and determine those questions’ difficulty level for future tests? Quite possible, but we don’t know for sure.
In any case, let’s think about the brass tacks of what this means, numerically:
The RW section contains 27 questions per module. Given what we just learned about the presence of imposter questions, that actually only comes out to 25 REAL questions per module that matter for your score.
That ultimately means that there are only 50 questions in the whole RW section that actually count towards your RW section score.
As we discussed above, the Math section has 22 questions in each of its modules—two of which, we now know, don't count. So, in fact, only 20 questions impact your score in each of the Math modules.
Adding the two modules together, 20 + 20 = 40. So, your final Math score is going to be calculated based on your answers to those 40 questions.
DSAT score breakdowns
Now that we’ve laid the foundation, we can make all of this abstract info feel more concrete by walking through some example scores.
Perfect score on the Digital SAT
Let’s say you got ALL of the questions correct on the Reading + Writing section—all 54 questions. Well done, you! Since you answered 100% correctly, you’re also guaranteed to have aced the 50 Qs that actually counted (in addition to the 4 that didn’t). In that scenario, you’d get an 800 on the RW section. This same logic applies for the Math section.
When you add up these different hypothetical scores, on the high end, you could get up to an 800 in Reading + Writing, and an 800 in Math, for a 1600 total. That would be a perfect score.
Lowest possible score on the Digital SAT
Alternately, let’s imagine a less exciting outcome: if you get none of the Reading + Writing questions correct, you’d be given a score of 200. Same goes for Math.
On that lowest end, then, your total score—if you added the two sections together—would be a 400.
Digital SAT Grading Rubric
“Hang on,” I can hear you asking. “How many questions across the test will get me a given score between that 200 and 800?”
You’re asking about the thing we all wish existed, my friend: a Digital SAT scoring rubric.
And by “rubric,” I mean: “if you get 38 questions correct on Math and 44 questions in Reading Writing, the magical rubric/formula/equation would definitely produce X total score.”
But that mythical scoring rubric? We will never definitively have a full version of it. The College Board releases only very broad ranges of what each number of RW and Math questions, correctly answered, may give you score-wise on their printed practice tests.
However, those of us who make it their job to learn every thing there is to learn about these tests (like me) CAN make informed projections. And so, I’m going to give you a pretty decent approximation of the DSAT scoring curve with a handy chart I’ve made. I created the below chart by carefully reviewing all of the available Bluebook practice tests, AND the score ranges that the College Board publishes from its linear/non-adaptive practice tests.
Reading + Writing Score Chart for the Digital SAT
I created the above chart for the Reading + Writing section of the Digital SAT. Now, there are NO guarantees here. This chart is not going to hold true for every single practice test. But it IS a fairly confident estimate—and you can use it to get a good guess of what your score could likely be, based on the number of questions you're getting right in this section.
You may have noticed something about the chart. It goes from zero questions correct all the way through getting all 54 questions correct. Now, as you know, of those 54 correct questions, four of those get thrown out. It’s partially because we don't know which Qs are fake that this chart is only approximate, not precise.
You will also note that some of the chart’s “# of questions correct” entries have two possible corresponding scores, and there’s a reason why:
Imagine that you got 19 questions correct in Reading + Writing. You might have done that by getting 19 correct in Module 1, and now that you got the harder Module 2, you got intimidated or nervous…and unfortunately get zero correct in that second module!
So that’s one way you could get 19 questions correct overall in the whole RW section. However, another way to arrive at that final section tally is this: maybe you got five questions correct in the first module, got the easier Module 2, and then aced 14 questions there! Thus, you could have gotten 19 total questions correct by getting the easier OR the harder second module!
Likewise, there are multiple configurations that involve 44 total correct questions. Maybe you got all 27 correct in Module 1, and then you got the harder second module and got freaked out…and only answered another 17 questions correctly. Again, that might be one way you could get 44 questions correct. However, you could have gotten 17 correct questions in the FIRST module, gotten the easier Module 2, and then gotten ALL 27 correct there! (I'm assuming that you need ~19 questions correct to move onto the harder Module 2.) So again, you could theoretically get 44 questions correct with the easier OR the harder Module 2.
If, on the other hand, you have one of the low numbers on the chart, you couldn't have gotten the harder Module 2. Only 12 questions correct? Even if you had gotten all 12 correct in Module 1, that is not enough to give you the harder Module 2.
That’s why, if you look at my chart, you’ll notice that from 46 points on, you only have one score. Because in order to get this many questions correct, that means you had to have gotten most correct in that first module, so we know you had the harder second module.
So really, it's the ones in the middle, the ones from approximately 19 questions total to approximately 45 questions total, where you could have gotten the easier module OR the harder module and still gotten that number of questions correct total.
By my calculations, if you got the easier module, you would get the lower of the pair of numbers on the chart. If you got that number of questions correct, but you did it by answering questions in the harder second module, you would earn the higher number out of the pair.
Another thing to point out: the curve of Reading + Writing gets merciless at the top. You miss one, and you're usually docked 10 or 20 points. I've even seen a practice test that sliced off more points than that.
Digitally Based SAT: Math Score Chart
So now let's look at another score curve, this one for the Math section.
Again, this chart gives you approximations, not certainties—but reasonable approximations.
As in the RW section, if you're answering very few questions correctly, there's only one way to get to that final score: you get very few questions correct in Module 1, and then you get the easier second module. So there's only one possible score for those options.
At the high end, you're getting 36 to 44 questions correct. That means you got so many right in that first module that you're basically guaranteed to proceed to the harder second module.
As with RW, there's one track for each of the two score extremes in Math. It's the scores in the middle where you could have gotten 29 questions correct from the easier second module OR from doing really well on the first and then getting the harder one and getting a lot fewer questions right on that. So, for this 29 correct questions example, if you took the easier second module, you might score a 540. Whereas if you had the harder second module, and then you got that many questions correct total, you might get a score that’s 20 or 30 points higher.
Conclusion
If you’re still reading, congrats on your perseverence! I know it’s been a long post with a lot of numbers to sift through. But that level of detail is necessary if you’re to fully grasp how the Digital SAT is scored.
And if you’re interested in using that info to your advantage—like, how do you actually raise your Math and RW section scores?—then I encourage you to check out my complete set of Digital SAT online courses. Each one is completely virtual, completely self-directed, and includes all the strategy and content you need to get a sky-high score on all four modules of the test.
Or, if you’d rather work side by side with the expert who wrote this post and created those score charts (moi), learn about one-on-one sessions with me here.
