SAT scores rise: Students excel in math, verbal

The nation's high school class of 2003 achieved the best score on the math section of the SAT exam in at least 36 years, while students' verbal scores hit a 16-year high.

The College Board, which owns the nation's most popular college entrance exam, said Tuesday that this year's high school graduates had an average cumulative score of 1,026 points on the SAT, up six points from 2002. Both the average math (519) and verbal (507) scores were up three points from last year.

The math and verbal sections of the SAT are each graded on 200-800 point scale. A total of 897 students in the United States had a perfect cumulative score of 1,600 this year.

More than 2,100 college-bound Utah students tallied a mean score of 566 on the verbal test, up slightly from 2002, and 599 on math. Most Utah students take the ACT college entrance exam. Typically, a different and much smaller group of students take the SAT.

"Those are kids headed to Ivy League or equivalent schools," said Mark Peterson, spokesman for the Utah State Office of Education.

Overall, some 1.4 million students in the class of 2003 took the SAT during their high school career. The nonprofit College Board said 36 percent of those taking the test were minority students, up 6 percent from a decade ago.

"Higher SAT scores, a record number of test-takers, and more diversity add up to a brighter picture for higher education," College Board President Gaston Caperton said in a prepared statement.

"While we certainly need to make more progress, the fact remains that we are clearly headed in the right direction."

This year's average math scores are the highest the College Board could document since 1967. Scores prior to 1995 were recalculated to reflect changes made that year so that the numbers would be comparable to more recent scores. The board was unable to provide comparable scores prior to 1967. The SAT was first given in 1926.

The College Board said the higher scores were due to increased enrollment in advanced math and science courses such as physics, precalculus, calculus and chemistry.

The president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics credited teaching methods that make math meaningful.

"(Students are) looking at problems that don't just involve pure calculation and computation-type of mathematics," said Johnny Lott. "They're looking at real-world problem solving."