43% of 2011 College-Bound Seniors Met SAT® College and Career Readiness Benchmark

Sept. 2011

Programs and Services

Nearly 1.65 Million Students Take SAT®;
2011 SAT Takers Largest and Most Diverse Class in History

New research from the College Board reveals that 43 percent of the 2011 college-bound seniors met the SAT® College and Career Readiness Benchmark, which represents the level of academic preparedness associated with a high likelihood of college success and completion. Developed based on rigorous research analyzing the SAT scores and college performance of a nationally representative student sample at more than 100 institutions, the SAT Benchmark score indicates a 65 percent likelihood of achieving a B- (2.67) average or higher during the first year of college, which is indicative of a high likelihood of college success and completion. College Board research also shows that students who meet or exceed the SAT Benchmark have a substantially higher college retention rate than those students who do not attain the SAT Benchmark.

“Students who meet the College Board’s SAT College Readiness Benchmark are more likely to enroll in, succeed in and graduate from college,” said College Board President Gaston Caperton. “The SAT Benchmark reaffirms the important role that the SAT plays in college readiness, which is critical to preparing our students to successfully compete in the global economy.”

The SAT Benchmark is intended to be used to measure the college readiness of groups of students such as in a school or district. The SAT Benchmark should never discourage students from pursuing postsecondary education, nor should it be used for high-stakes decisions about the readiness of any individual student. The College Board believes that many factors contribute to college readiness, and students that score below the SAT Benchmark may still be successful in college, especially with additional preparation and perseverance. As always, the College Board advises that, for individual high-stakes decisions such as admission, SAT scores should always be used together with high school grades and other factors.

SAT Benchmark data for the entire 2011 College-Bound Seniors cohort provides a broad indicator of college readiness for the entire population of college-bound seniors. The SAT Benchmark was developed as a tool to help secondary school administrators, educators and policymakers evaluate the effectiveness of academic programs in order to better prepare students for success in college and beyond. The College Board is currently working in partnership with state education leaders to review SAT Benchmark research and determine how state-level benchmarks may be implemented in a meaningful way.

Setting a New Standard for College and Career Readiness Benchmarks

The SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark has many unique characteristics that differentiate it from other available tools. For instance:

• The SAT Benchmark is based on the most thoroughly researched college admission exam in the United States. Internal and external research show the SAT to be an excellent predictor of college outcomes that is fair and valid for all students.
  — Additionally, each section of the SAT is valid and reliable as an individual measure of the skills and knowledge in critical reading, mathematics or writing that students need for success in college.
• The SAT Benchmark defines its criteria for success as a 65 percent probability of achieving a B- grade point average, providing a powerful and rigorous predictor of college success.
• By using overall first-year GPA as its college performance metric, the SAT Benchmark applies to all students and covers the full range of first-year course work taken and encompasses the entirety of students’ first-year performance.
• The SAT Benchmark offers educators the benefit of one straightforward yet powerful combined score that captures students’ overall academic knowledge and cross-disciplinary skills.
  — The College Board also provides SAT subject-level readiness indicators in each of the three sections — critical reading, mathematics and writing — as a supplemental tool that can be used to help educators measure students’ preparedness in each subject area.
• The SAT Benchmark is based on a nationally representative, diverse sample of students enrolled in a nationally representative sample of four-year colleges and universities across the United States.

SAT College and Career Readiness Connected to NAEP, the 'Nation’s Report Card'

Not only is the SAT Benchmark a reliable tool for measuring the college and career readiness of groups of students, but a multiyear validity research program led by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) has found strong content alignment and statistical linkages between the SAT and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card.

The NAGB is the independent, bipartisan federal board established to set policy for the NAEP, and is undertaking this research effort to enable NAEP to report on the preparedness of 12th-graders for postsecondary education and job training.

The first component of the research program, a content-alignment study, found that “NAEP and the SAT assess almost the same content areas of mathematics with similar emphasis for each.” The content assessed on the SAT critical reading test is somewhat distinct from the NAEP reading; however, “both tests emphasize many of the same or closely related specific skills.”

The second component of the program, a statistical relationship study, found that the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark score for mathematics is “very close to the NAEP Proficient cut score,” and that the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark score for reading is “almost exactly the same as the NAEP Proficient cut score.”

These findings, together with extensive research demonstrating the SAT’s role as a fair and effective indicator of student preparedness for college, support the use of NAEP performance scores in math and reading as indicators of college preparedness.

The SAT is the only college admission test to which NAEP was statistically linked, and for which such close empirical connections have been demonstrated.

2011: The Largest and Most Diverse Cohort in SAT History

More college-bound students in the graduating class of 2011 took the SAT than in any other graduating high school class in history. Nearly 1.65 million students participated in the college-going process by taking the SAT, marking a 3 percent increase over 2010. Participation in the SAT has continued to grow despite that fact that the population of high school graduates in the United States has been steadily shrinking since 2008.

The 1,647,123 students who took the SAT also represent the most diverse class in history, underscoring the College Board’s continued commitment to access, equity and minority participation. The number of minority students participating in the college-going process by taking the SAT grew to 720,315, or 44 percent, of all SAT takers in this year’s graduating class. Additionally, the number of students who report a first language other and only English has increased 26 percent since 2007 (from 342,249 in 2007 to 431,319 in 2011). The SAT also is taken by more and more prospective first-generation college goers, up 12 percent over five years, and students who benefited from SAT fee waivers were up 14 percent since 2010 and 77 percent since 2007.

This year’s college-bound seniors’ average SAT scores were 497 in critical reading, 514 in mathematics and 489 in writing. Since 2007 — the first year for which June cohort data is available — students’ critical reading and writing scores have each experienced a 4-point decline, while mathematics scores have remained stable. It is common for mean scores to decline slightly when the number of students taking an exam increases because more students of varied academic backgrounds are represented in the test-taking pool. However, a decline in mean scores does not necessarily mean a decline in performance. There are more high-performing students among the class of 2011 than ever before.

Long-Term Impact of a Rigorous High School Education

Results of the 2011 College-Bound Seniors report showed that the SAT continues to underscore the value of a rigorous high school education. Students in the class of 2011 who reported completing a core curriculum — defined as four or more years of English, three or more years of mathematics, three or more years of natural science, and three or more years of social science and history — achieved a combined SAT score that was 143 points higher, on average, than those who did not compete a core curriculum.

Data confirm that students who complete a core curriculum and/or enroll in honors and AP® courses outperform peers who do not complete a core curriculum on the SAT.

Part of the College Readiness Pathway includes participation in the PSAT/NMSQT®. Nearly 3.5 million high school students took the PSAT/NMSQT during the 2010-11 school year, making it the most widely used preliminary college entrance exam. Seventy-nine percent of SAT takers in the class of 2011 reported taking the PSAT/NMSQT, and students who took the PSAT/NMSQT received a combined SAT score that was 145 points higher, on average, than that of students who did not.