What is a curve?

cheerioswithmilk
Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:02:55 +0000

The SAT is a curved test, meaning that your scaled score (600-2400) is dependent on your performance relative to other people, not how many you actually missed. What this means is that missing 4 on math, for example, won’t get you the same scaled score every time; the curve differs every time, depending on the difficulty of the test. An easy curve refers to when the scaled score is higher for a given raw score than usual, while a hard curve means that the scaled score is lower than usual.