Critical Reading
The critical reading section is made up of two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section. The first section is usually sentence completion that aims to test students vocabulary and sentence structure and organisation. The next two sections are made up of questions based off reading passages. The passages are excerpts from topics including social sciences, humanities, physical sciences or personal narratives.
Mathematics
The mathematics section is also known as the Quantitative or Calculation section is made up of two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section. One of the 25-minute sections is made up of 20 multiple-choice questions whilst the other 25-minute section contains 8 multiple-choice questions and 10 grid-in questions. The final 20-minute section is made up of 16 multiple-choice questions. The areas examined in the mathematics sections include; number and operations, algebra and functions, geometry, statistics, probability and data analysis. This is also the only section a calculator may be used and the calculator must be four-function, scientific and graphing calculators.
Writing
The writing section of the SATs is administered in three sections. The first section is an essay that must be completed in 25-minutes. The students are required to write on a given prompt. These prompts are often broad and philosophical in order to be accessible to all students regardless of their educational or social backgrounds. The second two sections are a 25-minute section and a 10-minute section containing a total of 49 multiple-choice questions. The multiple choice questions assess the students ability to improve sentences, identify sentence errors and improving, developing and organising paragraph structure through editing and revising sentences.
Whilst it is still important to complete and try your best on the writing section, it is more for domestic students in the US. Therefore, schools in the US will only look at an international student’s maths and critical reading score.
The highest score a student can achieve is 2400 on the 2400 scale, which means that a student would have to score, and 800 in each section. The average SAT score in 2014 was 1509, which measures, in the 48th percentile.