Colleges use college-bound seniors as a reference group to make decisions about students who have applied for admission to their institution. The percentile rank shows what percentage of college-bound seniors earned a score lower than theirs. For example, if a student's verbal national percentile rank is 64, then that student did better than 64 percent of students in the nation who took the same test. The national percentile rank is usually different from the state percentile rank because the national group of test takers is a larger, more diverse group than the state group. Also, because different groups of students take different Subject Tests, a Biology percentile, for example, cannot be compared with a Literature percentile.
Colleges accept students with a wide range of test scores.
If the middle 50 percent of freshmen at a college had SAT math scores between 500 and 560, then one in four students had a score below 500, and another one in four had a score above 560. Remind your students that colleges look at many factors when choosing their students. Students' score reports tell them if their verbal and math scores are truly different. The average score for both verbal and math is near the midpoint of the score scale, making it easy to compare the two. Students tend to focus on their single score, but the score range offers a better picture of their skills.