<p>According to College Board themselves, 131 people got a 600 (lowest possible score) on their SAT.</p>
<p>It surprises me that 131 people got the lowest possible score. I mean, come on, you really have to try to do this. You have to leave the essay blank (lowest possible score otherwise is a 2/12), and you have to get around a -2 raw score on each Multiple choice section.</p>
<p>A blank MC and essay would be a 660. A blank MC and the worst essay possible would be a 680. Do you guys agree with me that the people who got 700 and lower were just trying to fail on purpose, or what?</p>
<p>Apparently, more people got 600’s than 610s and 620s. Is 600 the default score if, for whatever reason, the student was disqualified (like cheating, or leaving the test midway)?</p>
<p>Also, how do you get a 610? That seems to be harder than getting a 600.
On the same note, it would suck to get a 2390.</p>
<p>I believe that if you are caught cheating or leave the exam early you do not receive a score so the 131 people who got a 600 in 2009 earned their scores. It does not seem logical that you could intentionally get all the answers wrong since to avoid inadvertently putting down a correct answer and scoring above 600 you would have to know all the correct answers and could theoretically have gotten a 2400. There may be some perverse characters out there who could score a 2400 but would rather score 600 but I doubt it.</p>
<p>The fact is, even though they are probably not in your circle of friends, there are some really dim-witted people out there who for some reason decided or were forced to take the SAT. The reason for the predominance of 600 scores on the low end is probably due to the guessing penalty. The students who scored 600 probably did get a few questions correct but lost so many points to incorrect guesses that they were only able to achieve the minimum score.</p>
<p>I would think that the primary reason that there are more 600s than 610s, say, is that several raw scores are binned into the minimum score of 200 for each section. For example, on math, typically a raw score of -3 will get you a 200, but so will -4, -5, and all the way down to -11, the minimum possible raw score on the SAT math.</p>
<p>I believe a disqualification results in no score, not a 600.</p>
<p>The gender distribution of the college population is not 50-50; I think the latest figures are closer to 60-40 (more women than men) and the SAT disparity (53-47) may even suggest that college dropouts are disproportionately male.</p>
<p>How can you be that bad a guesser though (and lazy enough to leave the essay blank)? Somebody who left everything blank would get a 660. Even somebody who guessed completely randomly and left the essay blank would get a 660. I can’t believe that there are 131 people dumb enough to unintentionally get 600s who took the SAT. I just cannot, because it is HARD to get a 600. Even if you guessed slightly worse than at complete random and did not know the answer to a single question (and skipped the essay), you would get at least a 610 for sure. These kids aren’t even lazy; they HAD to answer several questions in order to get LOWER than a 660.</p>
<p>Even somebody who (no offense intended) was mentally incapable of reading, and just filled in A for all of them for the fun of it, would get a 650-670. The only thing I can think of is maybe these kids filled in the bubbles incorrectly for every question, so the scanner could not read any of them and marked them all wrong. That would SUCK (although, they would also have to have left the essay blank, so they probably didn’t feel bad about it.)</p>
<p>there are many lazy people who are forced by their parents to take the SAT and end up sleeping through the exam; their answer sheets are probably blank.</p>
<p>As for the essay, perhaps they similarly didn’t understand the directions and thought it was optional? I can see some confusion on this point, as the ACT has a writing OPTIONAL section and the SAT used not to have writing.</p>
<p>Some people are having fun with the process. Objective: p**s off parents, or some relevant party. Mission: accomplished. I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.</p>
<p>I read about someone who tried to answer every question wrong on the old version of the SAT. He made one critical error: on some of the math fill-in-the-blank, he answered by converting his name into numbers using the A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 scheme. He got one of the fill-in-the-blank questions correct.</p>