What's a Good SAT Score for 2026?

Planning to take the SAT this year? Then you're probably wondering, "What's a good SAT score for 2026?" In this in-depth guide, we walk through three different ways you can define good SAT scores for 2026 (or any other year!) and then explain how to figure out the SAT score you need to meet your goals.

What's a Good SAT Score 2026 Overall?

On the most basic level, a good SAT score is one that's generally higher than the scores of other students who took the test. An easy rule of thumb is that any SAT score that places you in the top half of test takers is good. The higher your score is above average, the better. Similarly, SAT scores that place you in the bottom half of test takers are considered not so good. To determine how your SAT scores compare to others' scores, we'll need to look at SAT averages and percentiles from the past year.

According to the most recent College Board data, the average SAT score for the class of 2025 was 1029 (out of 1600). The average score for the Math section is 508, whereas the average score for Reading and Writing section is 521.

This means that a good SAT score is any score above 1029.

We can also use percentiles to more precisely define what a good SAT score is. Remember, a percentile tells you what percentage of other test takers you scored the same as or better than on the SAT. For example, a 76th percentile score means you scored the same as or better than 76% of test takers.

The following chart tells you more specifically what SAT scores can be considered poor, good, and great. We used 2025 percentile data from the College Board to make this chart based on students who graduated in 2025.

Source: The College Board

Looking at the chart, you can see that you only need to score 1350 on the SAT to be within the top 10% of test takers. Contrary to what you might expect, a perfect 1600 isn't required to get an excellent score — you don't even need to break 1400!

On the other hand, a score of 750 or below puts you in the bottom 10% of test takers and won't look very strong on college applications. Even if you managed to raise your score from 750 to 850, you'd still be in the bottom 25%, meaning that three-quarters of students did better than you on the SAT. This type of score is generally considered poor, and won't help you when applying to colleges.

However, percentiles aren't the only factor to consider when it comes to determining a good SAT score. You'll need to also pay attention to how strong your scores are for the specific colleges you're applying to.

What's a Good SAT Score 2026 for You?

Ultimately, what's most important when it comes to good SAT scores isn't what percentile you're in, but whether your score is high enough to get you into your dream college. At PrepScholar, we call this your SAT goal score. It's the score that's most likely to get you admitted to the schools you're applying to. Hit your goal score, and you'll have a great shot at attending your top-choice college!

Your own goal score will depend on where you plan to apply. If you're applying to extremely competitive Ivy League-level schools, like Stanford and Harvard, your goal score will be high—as close as you can get to a perfect 1600. If, on the other hand, you're looking at less competitive schools like University of Iowa, your goal score will be closer to a still-good-but-not-exceptional 1300. 

Let's walk through how to figure out what makes a good SAT score for you based on the schools you're applying to. Our quick three-step process requires only a worksheet (linked below), a writing utensil, and an internet-browsing device!

Step 1: Make a Schools Chart

Your first step is to make a chart that includes the name of each school you’re applying to and the 25th percentile and 75th percentile scores for each school’s admitted students. You can make the chart yourself, or download ours.

Fill in all the schools you want to apply to in the leftmost column. The priority should be your match schools and reach schools, but safety schools are also worth including. If you aren't sure where you want to apply, we recommend taking the time to do some research on schools you might want to attend first so that you have a realistic SAT goal score. You can also try out our college chances tool to get more ideas of which schools you might be interested in.

The more your list reflects the schools you actually end up applying to, the more accurate your target score will be.

Step 2: Find SAT Score Ranges for Your Schools

The next step is to do some online research to find the SAT information for each school. Specifically, you'll want to look for the middle 50%, or average, range of SAT scores⁠—i.e., the 25th and 75th percentile scores⁠—for each school.

The easiest way to do this is to use our PrepScholar college database. Simply search for "[School Name] PrepScholar" or "[School Name] PrepScholar SAT" and then click the link to the school's page in either our SAT/GPA or admissions databases.

Once you've clicked the link to that school's page in one of our databases, scroll down to find the SAT score information for that school. Fill in the 25th and 75th percentile SAT scores for that school.

If you score at or above the 75th percentile for any school, you'll have an excellent chance of getting in (assuming your other credentials are on point for the school). So that's a good SAT score for that school. If you're at the 25th percentile, however, you'll need to have a particularly strong application to boost your odds of getting in.

For each school on your list, Google the PrepScholar SAT score information, and write down the 25th- and 75th-percentile scores in the appropriate row for that school on your goal score sheet.

Step 3: Set Your SAT Goal Score

Now that you have your school chart complete, it’s time to figure out your goal score! To do this, find the highest 75th percentile score in your chart. This will be the SAT score you’re going to aim for because it’s the most likely to get you accepted to all the schools in your list.

If your goal score is much higher than your current score and/or you're applying to just a few schools with a much higher SAT average, you can use the average of the 75th percentile scores instead.

How Does a Good SAT Score for 2026 Compare to Past Years?

Now that we’ve gone over different ways to determine good SAT scores, let's look at how average SAT scores from 2025 compare to past years' scores. Are good SAT scores for this year the same as good SAT scores for past testing years?

In short, yes! Good SAT scores don’t change much from year to year; however; there are some fluctuations over time.

Here are SAT averages from 2017 through 2025:

As the chart above shows, average SAT scores have not changed drastically, but we can see a dip beginning in 2023. This may be due to lingering effects of school closures due to COVID-19 and/or the beginning of the shift to the digital SAT. Whatever the cause, the change is still fairly minimal.

Recap: What's a Good SAT Score for 2026?

There are three main ways you can define good SAT scores for 2026.

One way is to look at the national average, which is 1029. Any score above this threshold can be considered a good score, as it means you've done better than the majority of test takers.

Another way of defining good SAT scores is to look at SAT score percentiles, which compare your performance with those of other test takers. The higher your percentile, the better you did relative to other students. In general, scores in the 50th percentile (1010) are average, while scores in the 75th percentile (1190) and 90th percentile (1350) are good and excellent, respectively.

The last (and by far most important!) way you can define good SAT scores for 2025 is to figure out what scores are good for you based on the schools you're applying to. Look for SAT score data for each of your schools; the highest 75th percentile score will be your target score—that is, what's considered a good score for you and you alone.

Once you know what score to aim for on the SAT, you can get started on coming up with your very own SAT study plan!