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What is a Good SAT Score for Top Universities?
National benchmarks, top-school floors, and where more prep stops paying
Arkesh P.
Chief Operating Officer at Crimson
Summary
A good SAT score is one at or above the 50th percentile of your target school's enrolled range, and a score at the 75th settles the testing question entirely. At top-25 colleges that means roughly 1500 to 1570, while plenty of strong schools sit hundreds of points lower. Published ranges describe enrolled students who submitted, so they run high and should be read as context rather than cutoffs. Set a target per school, not one number for your whole list.
What is a good SAT score?
A good SAT score is one that sits at or above the 50th percentile of your target school's enrolled-student range. However, a score at or above the 75th percentile settles the testing question entirely, and is the outcome worth aiming for.
There's no standard “good” score, because it depends entirely on what you're measuring against:
Nationally, against everyone who sits the test, a score can rank in the top few percent of the country and still fall below a selective college's published range.
At each school, against its enrolled mid-50% range, a 1490 settles testing at Florida and sits below the floor at Johns Hopkins. This is the comparison that decides admissions.
By purpose, because merit scholarships, honors colleges and direct-entry programs set their own thresholds, and getting admitted doesn't mean you've cleared them.
What counts as a good SAT score nationally?
At the national level, a good score starts around 1200, the 75th percentile of everyone who takes the test. College Board's most recent published data covers the graduating class of 2025 and just over two million test takers, and it puts the mean total score at 1029 and the median at 1010. Scores of 1400 and above belong to the top 7%.
SAT score | Percentile | Top |
1600 | 99+ | 1% |
1550 | 99 | 1% |
1500 | 97 | 3% |
1450 | 95 | 5% |
1400 | 93 | 7% |
1350 | 89 | 11% |
1300 | 85 | 15% |
1250 | 80 | 20% |
1200 | 75 | 25% |
1150 | 69 | 31% |
1100 | 62 | 38% |
1050 | 55 | 45% |
1000 | 47 | 53% |
collegeboard.org
These are user percentiles, set against everyone who actually sat the SAT across the last three graduating classes. College Board also publishes a nationally representative version covering all US 11th and 12th graders whether they test or not, and it runs much higher: a 1450 is 95th here and 99th there. The user figure matches the pool you’re applying against.
Those numbers also tell you whether you're in range for merit money at schools that publish score bands, and they stop a 1450 from feeling like a failure. Selective colleges measure you against their own enrolled ranges rather than against the country as a whole, which is how a nationally elite score can still sit below Duke's floor.
SAT score ranges at top colleges for 2026/27
The table below shows each school's most recently reported mid-50% range for enrolled students, compiled in mid-2026.
Two things to bear in mind. First, these ranges cover only the students who enrolled and submitted an SAT score, which is never the whole class. Across this table that runs from 24% of enrolled students at Vanderbilt to 83% at MIT.
Where a school ran an optional policy, strong scorers tended to submit while weaker ones withheld, cutting the bottom out of the published range so it reads higher than the class really was. The effect is largest where testing is still optional and smallest at schools that never dropped the requirement, like the University of Florida, or restored it early, like MIT. Treat these as context rather than cutoffs.
Second, the withhold floor column restates that 25th percentile: at a test-optional school it's the line below which withholding is the default, and at a test-required school it's the line below which your score starts working against you.
University | SAT mid-50% | Withhold/Minimum floor | Good Score | Policy for 2026/27 |
Johns Hopkins | 1530-1565 | 1530 | 1565 | Required |
Stanford | 1520-1570 | 1520 | 1570 | Required |
MIT | 1520-1570 | 1520 | 1570 | Required |
Harvard | 1450-1560 | 1450 | 1560 | Required |
Columbia | 1510-1560 | 1510 | 1560 | Optional (final cycle; required from 2027-28) |
Penn | 1510-1570 | 1510 | 1570 | Required |
Duke | 1510-1570 | 1510 | 1570 | Optional |
UChicago | 1500-1560 | 1500 | 1560 | Optional |
Northwestern | 1510-1560 | 1510 | 1560 | Optional |
Vanderbilt | 1510-1560 | 1510 | 1560 | Optional through fall 2028 entry; required from fall 2029 |
Rice | 1510-1560 | 1510 | 1560 | Optional, scores recommended |
WashU | 1500-1550 | 1500 | 1550 | Optional; superscores SAT and ACT |
Carnegie Mellon | 1500-1560 | 1500 | 1560 | Required except Fine Arts; Computer Science needs SAT or ACT, other colleges accept AP, IB or A-Level |
Princeton | 1490-1560 | 1490 | 1560 | Optional (final cycle; required from 2027-28) |
Cornell | 1490-1550 | 1490 | 1550 | Required |
Williams | 1490-1550 | 1490 | 1550 | Optional |
Pomona | 1490-1550 | 1490 | 1550 | Optional (permanent policy) |
NYU | 1480-1550 | 1480 | 1550 | Optional |
Emory | 1480-1540 | 1480 | 1540 | Optional |
Yale | 1480-1560 | 1480 | 1560 | Required (SAT or ACT; AP and IB do not substitute) |
Brown | 1470-1550 | 1470 | 1550 | Required |
Notre Dame | 1460-1540 | 1460 | 1540 | Optional |
USC | 1470-1540 | 1470 | 1540 | Optional |
Dartmouth | 1440-1550 | 1440 | 1550 | Required |
Georgetown | 1405-1530 | 1405 | 1530 | Required |
UVA | 1410-1510 | 1410 | 1510 | Optional |
UNC Chapel Hill | 1400-1530 | 1400 | 1530 | Conditional (2.8 GPA threshold) |
Georgia Tech | 1370-1530 | 1370 | 1530 | Required |
Michigan | 1370-1530 | 1370 | 1530 | Optional |
Florida | 1330-1490 | 1330 | 1490 | Required; CLT accepted |
The University of California campuses are excluded because they're test free and won't read a score you send. That may not last: more than 3,000 UC faculty have signed open letters calling for the tests to return, and the regents have set June 2027 for a recommendation. UT Austin and Caltech require testing but don't publish ranges.
Don't read a published range as the bar you have to clear
A quarter of every class sits below the 25th percentile number, and the numbers themselves are falling. As schools return to required testing, every enrolled student's score enters the data and the full cohort drags the range down.
Harvard shows this happening already. In its last test-optional intake, 54% of enrolled students submitted an SAT score and its range ran 1510-1580. In the first intake admitted under the reinstated requirement, that rose to 79% and the range fell to 1450-1560. Expect the same correction at other newly required schools, so today's numbers are a high-water mark. The bar you actually face will be lower.
Among schools that require testing, the floor runs from 1330 at Florida to 1530 at Johns Hopkins. Two hundred points separate the easiest required school from the hardest. A good score is always school-specific.
You can't set a target without a baseline.
Find yours with a free SAT practice test.
Should you submit SAT scores to Test Optional Colleges?
Six of the eight Ivies require scores this cycle. Princeton and Columbia bring the requirement back for 2027-28, so every Ivy will require a score from this year's juniors onward. If your list holds more than two or three highly selective schools, at least one almost certainly requires one, so you're taking the test regardless of what the optional schools say.
At the schools still running an optional policy, withholding isn't a blank space in the file. Admissions officers know that students who clear the published range submit almost without exception, so an empty testing section is itself information: withholding doesn't reset you to neutral, it moves you to an estimate. That is why a good score is one you can actually submit.
What SAT score should you aim for?
Set your target against the range at each school on your list, using a simple ladder.
75th: the target
The score is no longer a question in your file. Testing is finished.
50th: working minimum
Competitive, but your essays and activities still have to do real work.
25th: below the withhold floor
Working against you. Withhold where you can; where required, the file must offset it.
Aim high early rather than perfectly late. Testing is the one major component of your application you can finish before senior year.
When to stop prepping
Past your reach school’s 75th percentile, extra points buy almost nothing. Caltech has made that literal: from the 2026-27 cycle it groups section scores of 780 to 800 into a single band and hides the actual number from its admissions committee, so a 1600 and a 1580 reach the reader as the same thing. Once you hit the target, close the testing workstream and reinvest those hours in the work that distinguishes you from other students.
Getting a 1600 on the SAT, of course, to some parents is an achievement. But for admissions officers at Stanford and MIT and Princeton, I don't think that is the kind of thing that sets you apart.
Aman D.
Former MIT Admissions Officer
Good SAT scores for scholarships, honors and direct-entry programs
Several flagship publics run merit awards with published score bands, where a specific number unlocks a specific dollar amount. A 1400 might change nothing about your admission odds at that kind of school and still be worth tens of thousands, which changes the calculation on a retake entirely. Competitive awards work differently. Vanderbilt's Cornelius Vanderbilt Scholarship weighs the whole application and names no score, and UNC's Morehead-Cain is explicitly test-optional, so the same number that unlocks money at one school is irrelevant at another.
Direct-entry and accelerated programs set their own rules, often at otherwise test-optional schools. GW's Seven-Year BA/MD, Stevens' accelerated pre-med and pre-law tracks and Union College's Leadership in Medicine and 3+3 Accelerated Law all require scores. Honors colleges at large publics are commonly score-gated too, and honors tracks often carry their own funding. Before you decide whether a score is good enough, work out what you need it to buy.
The digital SAT: what adaptive scoring means for you
The SAT has been digital and adaptive since 2024, and is scored from 400 to 1600 across two sections, Reading & Writing and Math. Each section runs in two modules, and your performance on the first module determines whether the second is easier or harder. Getting the harder second module is good news, because it carries the higher score ceiling. Reaching it means you performed well on module one, so a tougher screen halfway through isn't a reason to panic.
You can't return to a module once it closes, which makes pacing within each module matter more than it did on paper. You get roughly a minute per question, and the students who run out of time are usually the ones who never practiced under a clock.
Section scores matter as much as the composite
Readers see your section scores alongside the total, and where you spend prep hours should follow your intended major rather than pure composite maximization. If you're aiming at pre-med, engineering or any quantitative program, push Math toward 800 even when your composite already sits at 1520, because those readers weight the Math line heavily. Applying to writing-intensive programs puts the same weight on Reading & Writing in reverse.
At a test-optional school, that balance also affects whether you submit. A 1500 built from 800 Math and 700 Reading & Writing clears Emory's composite floor of 1480, but the 700 sits below its Reading & Writing 25th percentile of 720. A strong composite won't hide a weak section.
Does superscoring change what counts as a good score?
At many colleges, yes. Superscoring means the school builds your composite from your best section scores across every sitting it sees. Score 750 Math with a 680 Reading & Writing in March, then 710 and 740 in May, and a superscore school reads you as a 1490, higher than either sitting produced on its own.
That changes your strategy in two ways. A retake can target one weak section without risking your strong one, because your best result is already banked. And your superscore may already clear a target that no single sitting does, so work it out before booking another date.
The policy is school-specific, and so is the mechanism. Yale lets you report a superscore yourself, while MIT and Penn ask for every sitting and build it for you. Carnegie Mellon superscores the SAT but not the ACT, and Georgetown refuses superscores outright, requiring at least one complete SAT or ACT. Check each admissions page before you plan around it.
If you're applying from outside the US
Almost nothing else in your application is a fact an admissions officer can take at face value. You might be ranked first in your school, but how competitive is your school? How does your curriculum compare to the one the applicant in the next file is taking? What do your activities actually amount to?
The SAT means the same thing in Shanghai as it does in San Francisco, which is why it carries more weight for applicants whose schools send few students to American universities. Where the admissions office already knows how to read a feeder school's transcript, it has to guess at yours. The same holds at under-resourced schools anywhere: a score well above your school's average is direct evidence you've outperformed your context, which a holistic reader can't easily verify another way.
When should you take the SAT, and how many times?
The earlier you settle your score, the more of high school you get back for the parts of your application only you can build.
Sophomore year, or the summer after it
Take a full-length practice SAT and a full-length practice ACT under timed conditions, and commit to whichever format you score higher on and find more natural.
The long break before junior year
Start structured prep, building up rather than starting at full intensity, in the same way you'd return to training rather than attempting a marathon cold.
Junior year
Sit your first official SAT. August, March and December are the most popular dates for good reason, since each one follows a long break. The fall PSAT doubles as a low-stakes benchmark and, for top scorers, as the National Merit qualifier.
Early senior fall
Retake once if you're still short of your target, before early application deadlines close. December is the last usable date before regular decision.
Two to three sittings is the norm
One for a baseline, one to capture the payoff from your prep, and a third only if a closable gap remains. Score Choice lets you pick which sittings most colleges see, though it’s worth checking each school’s policy, because where a reader sees your full history, repeated sittings without an upward trajectory start to read as fixation.
Cost shouldn't cap your score
College Board fee waivers cover multiple sittings and score sends. A 1320 from a student who sat the test cold suggests more room to grow than the same score after a year of tutoring.
For all of our students, we want them to get at least a 1500, because that increases their chances of admission. But it isn't the make-or-break thing. American applications are so holistic that it's really hard to say if you have this score you're in, and if you have this score you're out.
Tess L.
Director of In-Person Tutoring, Crimson Education
A strong score sets expectations too
A submitted score also sets the reader's expectation for everything that follows. A 1580 sent to Harvard promises that your activities, honors and essays will confirm elite academic ability. When they don't, the mismatch works against you. It runs the other way too: withhold a 1510 when your research record reads like a 1580, and the file still hangs together. A good score, in the end, is one that matches the story the rest of your application is telling. For the full submit-or-withhold framework school by school, see our test-optional guide.
Good SAT scores: FAQs
Is 1400 a good SAT score?
Nationally, yes. A 1400 puts you in the top 7% of all test takers. Against the most selective schools, no. In the table above it clears the withhold floor at only four of the thirty: Florida, Georgia Tech, Michigan and UNC. Whether it’s a good score depends entirely on where you’re applying.
Is 1500 a good SAT score?
A 1500 clears the floor at 21 of the 30 schools in the table above, which makes it submittable almost everywhere. At the very top it’s a working minimum rather than a settled score, since nine schools in the table set their floor above it, Johns Hopkins highest at 1530. Crimson recommends aiming for at least 1500 at highly selective US universities.
Is 1200 a good SAT score?
A 1200 sits at the 75th percentile nationally and is competitive across a wide range of public and private universities, particularly the Southern flagships where testing is required. It sits below the floors of most top-50 selective schools, so judge it against each target school's published range rather than in isolation.
Do I need a good SAT score at a test-optional school?
You need one only if you submit. At or above the school's 50th percentile the score goes in, below its 25th it stays out, and in between it turns on whether the number answers a question your file leaves open. Most successful applicants at selective test-optional schools now submit, so a strong score stays an asset even where nobody requires it.
What is a good SAT score for the Ivy League?
Floors run from 1440 at Dartmouth to 1510 at Penn and Columbia, with 75th percentiles from 1550 to 1570. A 1560 settles testing at seven of the eight, Penn being the exception. Anything from 1500 to 1540 is competitive and leaves the rest of your file carrying more weight.
What if my SAT score is lower than I hoped?
Work out first whether to withhold the score or raise it. Where a school is test optional and you sit below its 25th percentile, withhold and lean on the rest of your profile. Where the deadline allows, a single-section retake at a superscoring school is the cheapest way to move the number.
Past that the score stops being your lever, and you're fighting an uphill battle, though not a lost one. In the 2025/26 admissions cycle, 37 Crimson students with SATs of 1450 to 1480 were admitted to top-20 schools, 11 of them to the Ivy League. What carried them was an audit trail: an olympiad result, or a capstone with a real product at the end of it, that someone outside the application could verify. Self-reported leadership doesn't do it at this score. A 1450 is workable, but only with something singular rather than a well-rounded collection of good things.
Set your target with Crimson
Your target SAT score depends on your school list, your intended major and whether it also has to unlock scholarship money. Setting that number and hitting it are two different jobs.
That first part is your strategist's. Every Crimson student works with one, building the testing timeline into an application plan: which test, which dates, and what number each school on your list actually needs. Former admissions officers and essay mentors shape the parts of the file a score can't carry.
Crimson's SAT tutoring is available for students who need help shifting their score. It starts with a full-length diagnostic, then a bootcamp matched to your score and one-to-one hours to close what's left, with every tutor scoring in the 99th percentile themselves. Students starting below 1200 gain an average of 220 points, and one in five improves by 200 or more.
In the 2025/26 admissions cycle alone, Crimson students earned 396 Ivy League acceptances. Benchmark where you stand with our free SAT practice tests, or book a free consultation to set a target worth stopping at.
