The SAT has been used since the 1920s to help determine high school students' apparent preparedness for college. Many colleges and universities across the country require applicants to submit SAT scores for consideration along with high school academic and extracurricular records, letters of recommendations, and results of personal interviews. The SAT is taken primarily by seniors but is also taken by a growing number of juniors and by a few others.
Some students take it more than once.
Nationally, the more than one million young people in last year's high school senior class who took the SAT, represented about one-third of their age group as a whole and about half of the number going on to college. The SAT includes both a verbal and mathematics subtest. Scores for both subtests are computed and reported separately on a scale of 200 to 800. The mathematics subtest of the SAT places emphasis on the application of mathematical concepts and data interpretation, including slope of a line and statistical concepts. The test permits students to use calculators and includes ten questions that ask students to devise their own answers rather than choose from a list of answers.