College Entrance Exams Do Colleges Look at the Raw Score or Percentile Earned on Standardized Tests? Written by Abigail Andersonon September 26th, 2017 I joined College Coach after working in independent school and college admissions. At the collegiate level, I evaluated thousands of applications and managed more than 20 student workers and 200 alumni interview volunteers. I recruited in, and read applications for, multiple domestic and international recruitment territories, including all of New England and the Mid-Atlantic, Europe, and the Americas. I also worked with and evaluated transfer applicants. Committed to increasing college access and demystifying the college application process, I collaborated with colleagues across institutions to develop free, accessible programming for high school juniors wanting to jumpstart the application process and improve their essay skills. My passion has always aligned with working directly with high school students; I started my career in admissions at a highly-selective all-girls’ boarding school. While there, I recruited students throughout New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and California. I oversaw multicultural and first-generation student recruitment, participated in both admission and financial aid committees, and assisted in residence hall management. Learn More About Abigail act, college admissions advice, sat, standardized testing, My colleague recently had a student ask whether or not he should be sending a Math I Subject Test with a score of 740 and a percentile rank of 89 or a Math II Subject test with a score of 760 and a percentile rank of 64. While the student’s raw score was stronger on Math II, the percentile reached was higher on Math I. This is a question we get all the time at College Coach and it’s honestly mindboggling to us, simply because we never would have looked at percentiles. When reading college applications, we all only looked at raw scores earned. Don’t believe me? Here’s a sampling of the responses sent to my colleague when she double-checked her own answer with the team: "We never looked at the percentiles at Penn, just the scores themselves. Go with the higher one." “At College of the Holy Cross and Babson we never looked for or saw the percentiles. We only made decisions based on the scores.” “I’d definitely send the higher score. Discussing percentiles, if they were discussed at all in committee, was usually a side conversation at MIT and Caltech; they were not something we paid attention to all that much.” “I agree. Percentiles were meaningless at Swarthmore as well. We felt that it was mostly the super selective schools that required these [Subject Tests], so it's the 64th percentile of a really talented pool.” And the same was true where I worked, Reed College. At Reed, we didn’t even require SAT Subject Tests, so the only way I would have seen a student’s scores was if they chose to self-report them in the Common Application testing section—and there’s only space there for the raw scores, not the percentiles! So there you have it. From our experience working in college admissions, raw scores, rather than percentiles are used when looking at standardized testing. Related Resources Read | Posted on October 23rd, 2023 Should I Submit SAT or ACT Scores to Test Optional Schools? Read | Posted on June 15th, 2023 Standardized Testing Policies in 2023 Read | Posted on January 17th, 2023 Does Your PSAT Score Matter?
