SAT Score Averages for every New York High School (Data Inside)
Before we get into this New York post as just an FYI, our Massachusetts blog post on SAT scores by high school as well as our New Jersey Blog Post on scores by School was very popular and read among parents in our home state. So, excited to keeping sharing more data on SAT Score Averages for every New York high school.
Now there is a big caveat. Unlike Masachusetts and New Jersey where those 2 states have shared more recent data, this data set from New York spans all the way back to 2012 when the SAT was out of the 2400 format. Luckily though, SAT Score averages don’t change significantly from year to year so they still serve as a good proxy to how averages are likely to be the case today at these high schools.
In this blog post, we’re going to share the data collected from the New York High School city data to understand the SAT averages of specific High Schools in New York from 2012. You can view the data tables on their website if you would like. We’ll share our thoughts on these high school averages and how you can use them to guide your college admission strategy.
At Tigerway, our subjective house view is that standardized testing is also compared locally at the city and school-level. While admission offices may not confirm this, we think that a student’s scores are judged relative to their peers at their own high school or compared to peers with similar demographics, background, and academic environment.
As a basic example, if a student goes to the high school Stuyvesant in New York, you can see in the table below that the Critical Reading English average is 680 and the Math average is around a 730 for a total of 1400-1410. Some of our private coaches work with students from Stuyvesant High and we have seen many students regularly start with in the 1400 range try to get into the 1500 region. This implies that having a 1400 SAT Score from Stuyvesant High School is very typical, and not a standout datapoint. Similar to what we’ve said in other blog posts on this topic we believe that even if everyone has a 1400 SAT score at a high school, not all of the graduating class can get admitted into the Top 20 schools. There are quotas and allocation percentages that factor into each school.
Over the past several years, we’ve observed with concrete data that Stuvesant High School students need to typically score above a 1480+ on the SAT to stay competitive in the application process compared to peer students from their specific high school.
At the same time, broadly speaking, we found that students who score at the average (or below average) at their High Schools have a relatively more challenging time during college admissions for competitive schools even if their score is within the median of the incoming class.
What this implies about the process is the following:
Similar to our data from our home state Massachusetts and neighboring state New Jersey, we again think that colleges will check the averages of SAT scores at New York high schools when evaluating your standardized testing performance. As a result, while most parents and students focus on a College’s median scores and percentiles for scores of admitted students, we also think understanding your score relative to your current high school is also a valuable factor.
If your standardized test scores are much higher than your school’s average, and in this case the average is around 1400+ at Stuyvesant High School, then your score has special meaning in the context of college admissions.
Now If your SAT scores are higher than your school’s average AND your high school is underrepresented at the college you’re applying to, that is an added bonus to your application because now you represent “diversity” in the eyes of admission officers. So for instance if you attend West Bronx Academy for the Future, and you have a 1400+ SAT Score, that is special because the average SAT score in that school is closer to 870-940 out of 1600.
We think SAT scores are compared at the school level, your state, then the regional level (e.g. Northeast vs. South vs. West coast), and finally the national level. It makes most sense for admission officers to view the context of a score relative to the environment that score comes from. High scores from diversity applicants can have a serious positive boost to college applications.
The takeaway here is that you now have one more data point to view the context of your standardized test scores and whether you should submit them in today’s test optional environment.
The first goal of your SAT preparation process is to outperform the average at your school from the tables shown below. If you have among the highest set of scores from your academic class in your year, even if your scores fall slightly short of the typical admitted students’ score ranges, our Program thinks that your odds of being the preferred candidate from your high school is elevated.
New York SAT Averages by High School (Data Table from 2012- Focus on Critical Reading and Math Scores for the total out of 1600 on the SAT)
Connect with us: Our Coaching Team at Tigerway has extensive experience with the PSAT, the Digital SAT, and the College Application process across the best colleges in the U.S.
If you want individual advice on your situation with a private coach, let’s connect to see how we can best help you achieve your goals.
Contact Info:
Calvin Cheung, Director (617-749-8421, text today to book a call)
WeChat ID: CalvinGCheung
Email: Students@tigerwayprep.com
