August 2020 sat

Test Preparation
1

My son is planning on taking the august sat but I am concerned that with so many seniors who could not take the March and June sat’s taking it in august that it may skew the scores this year. Is that possible

2

What do you mean by skew the scores? SAT scores don’t change based on the amount of kids taking the exam. Depending on the difficulty of the exam, it is curved, but that won’t affect his score outcome. Also, I’m assuming you mean juniors since seniors took the SAT last year.

3

Here is my logic. As this adds so many more former juniors now seniors into the Aug exam date, is it not likely to cause the average score to be higher. Would this not cause the curve to hurt those taking the exam in Aug.

4

Some seniors are taking gap years and planning on taking the SAT again to reapply. That could be what OP means.

5

I’m still not seeing how your logic makes any sense. The amount/type of students taking the SAT never affects the curve or the difficulty of the exam. The curve is set before the exam is ever taken. While I could see your concern at seniors who have supposedly learned more material causing the score average to be higher, that’s likely not the case. If they’re taking it in August, they’ve not started their senior year and have only just completed their junior year. That’s the same amount of education most people taking the SAT have. If you’re that concerned about your son’s score, he can always retake it.
Also, many rising seniors take the SAT well into August on a normal year.

6

I know it sounds weird but the curve is set before the test is actually taken

7

Thanks! I had no idea the curve would be set before. In that case it really makes no difference. How do they know the curve before the exam?

8

https://tri-edtutoring.com/sat-curves-what-every-student-and-parent-needs-to-know-about-sat-curves/

9

It’s the whole point of the SAT. They want a given score to mean the same thing no matter which edition of the test you take. So they have an experimental section on each SAT test that has the questions for a future test. Since they know the score each student got on the rest of the test that counted, they could adjust the curve for the experimental section to make it have the same distribution. Then they give that section on a future SAT.