Have SAT Standards Been Lowered Over Time?
The SAT has undergone several major revisions since its debut in 1926, and a number of those changes have been criticized as making the test easier or inflating scores — though the College Board, which administers the exam, has consistently framed each revision as an improvement in fairness or relevance.
Key Changes Critics Point To
- 1995 Score Recentering: The College Board recalibrated the SAT's scoring scale so that the midpoint of 500 per section was restored. In practice, this effectively raised many students' scores without any change in performance — a pre-1995 score of 1450 was considered roughly equivalent to a post-1995 score of around 1520. High-IQ societies like Mensa adjusted their SAT cutoffs to reflect this shift.
