As part of my career transition, some prospective employers want to know what my SAT/ACT scores were. Damned if I can remember. High School was 30 years ago. My college transcripts used to clearly display them, but now they appear to be in some incomprehensible code. Can anybody on these boards decode these results? As I recall, everything was really good except my Spanish ACT score, which may have actually been negative for some reason.
Good god. You’re 30 years out of high school and someone still gives a shit what your SAT scores were? Why wouldn’t they be satisfied with some more recent, and thus far more accurate, indicator of your current ability at whatever?
SAT combined (math + english) went up to 1600, and were the score you’d give if requested for a single number. I think they were always given as a multiple of 10.
I’m fairly sure SAT scores are rounded to the nearest ten. You add your english score out of 800 and your math score out of 800 to get your combined score of 1600.
WAG, on the basis that SAT scores always end in a zero.
VB61: Verbal section, 610
MT65: Math section, 650
TS60-: Test of Standard Written English, something close to 60
(This was the no-other-place-to-put-it section on sentence structure.)
Alternately, these could be raw scores, that would translate to a real score according to that session’s Sekret Formula.
Here’s the SATpage for archived scores (even pre-1975). You probably don’t need an actual score report, but there is a phone number you can call, maybe someone there can interpret the codes.
If you can, you’ll want to find out your percentage ranking – especially from older tests. First of all, the test has changed beyond your recognition (no analogies, now with an essay), and I believe the scoring has changed. Second, even year-to-year a particular score depends on the “difficulty” of the test in comparison to everyone else who took it. So if an employer is comparing you to some whippersnapper or someone in a different year, your percentages are a better indicator of test performance than the raw/scaled score.
SAT scores weren’t always multiples of 10. Cecil says here Bush’s score was 566 verbal (no intent to inject politics, just to show that scores weren’t always so round). And it’s pretty fucking retarded people care about 30 year old SAT scores. My memories of taking the test are quite fresh, but at college no one has talked about it, so I’ll probably forget pretty soon. I already have trouble remembering the specific scores on each section.
> I’m fairly sure SAT scores are rounded to the nearest ten.
SAT scores weren’t rounded till the early 1970’s. Until then they could be any number within the range. Then it was decided to round all the numbers to the nearest multiple of 10.
I have seen scores reported like this, with the final zero dropped. I assume the first entry is a date, saying that the administration is in December of 1978. I would guess it’s saying that your math was 650 and Verbal was 610. The SAT also includes a test of Standard Written English which has a different scale–we never paid much attention to that when I was in admissions so I don’t recall was it was. I think that’s what the “TS” stands for. I don’t know what the other initials mean, but most people who want SAT scores are focused on Verbal and Math.
The other scores reported may be from other assessment and achievement tests, such as APs, ACTs, or the kind that some schools give to all students.
Recall that SATs were re-centered in 1995; your employer may know this, if it is in the habit of asking for old scores (this mystifies me). So your scores are not equivalent to a 1260 today. They’re better.
When I took them (1953) they were not rounded to the nearest ten points and were kept secret from the taker. I actually found mine out when took a transcript to my faculty advisor, but the university was supposed to keep it from us too, although they obviously didn’t. When I took the GRE five years later, they sent us the scores.
Holy crap, you beat me! I took them in 1968, and they also were not rounded to the nearest 10 then. They came in big sheets of computer labels (fanfold size.) I worked in the college office of my high school and was in charge of pasting them in individual books for each person. Back then we did get them.
I also wonder why anyone would be interested in 30 year old scores. No one was interested in my SAT scores even when I applied to grad school 4 years after I took them. I think you can get into Mensa with them, besides that they seem kind of pointless at this late date.
What possible career transition could you be making where people want to know your SAT scores?
For that matter, for what job, regardless of career stage, could they be appropriate for anyone?
I am pretty sure that college admissions folks are carefully trained over and over and then over again on the statistical implications of the tests, that each one is only valid within a certain confidence level, what they are actually measuring and what they are actually NOT measuring, and what they could and should be used for and what they ought not be used for.
No way an employer has that information available to it.
Are you 100% sure you are not being played somehow? I don’t know what the game is, but this seems beyond dubious to me…
I have heard of all kinds of oddball things being asked in job interviews so I guess a 30 year old SAT score is just another odd thing someone wants to know.