SAT (Digital SAT Suite)

The SAT is a standardized test for undergraduate admissions, run by the College Board, a US non-profit. Universities read a score as one measure of how ready an applicant is for college-level work, weighed alongside grades and the rest of the application. There is no single passing mark. Each institution sets its own score expectations, and there is no fixed eligibility to sit the test, so it is taken mostly by high-school students planning to apply for a bachelor's degree.

The test is delivered digitally through the College Board's Bluebook application, and it is section-adaptive. There are two sections: Reading and Writing, and Math. Each runs as two modules; how hard the second is depends on how you did in the first. International testing moved to this digital, adaptive format in March 2023 and US testing followed in 2024, replacing the older paper version. You sit it at a test centre or a participating school.

The Reading and Writing section covers comprehension, vocabulary in context, grammar and rhetoric, with questions drawn from short passages across literature, history, the humanities and science. The Math section covers algebra, advanced math, problem-solving and data analysis, and geometry and trigonometry. Some questions are multiple choice; some ask you to type in a numerical answer.

For an Indian student, the SAT is a route to a bachelor's degree abroad: scores are read for undergraduate admission at universities in the US and in other countries. Each college decides how much weight an SAT score carries and what range it looks for, so what one institution asks for differs from the next.

Sources: College Board – SAT Suite of Assessments (official) · College Board – What's on the SAT (official) · SAT – Wikipedia