A 1600 is in the 99th percentile: it beats about 99 of every 100 SAT takers. Among the 400 most-applied-to colleges that report SAT ranges, it's at or above the 75th percentile at 400 of them.
A perfect score: the top of the SAT scale.
A 1600 is the highest score the SAT gives. It rounds to the 99th percentile, and only a small fraction of 1% of test takers reach it.
No college reads a 1600 as anything but the top of the scale. At the most selective colleges, where many applicants score in the high 1500s, the decision then turns on your courses, essays, recommendations and activities.
For scale: a 1550 is the 99th percentile. Check your own estimate with the SAT score calculator, or any score's rank with the SAT percentile calculator.
The middle 50% is the range between the 25th and 75th percentile SAT scores of a college's first-year students. Above the 75th percentile, your score is a strength; inside the range, it's typical; below the 25th, it's a reach that the rest of the application has to make up for.
| College | Middle 50% | Admit |
|---|---|---|
| Harvard University | 1480–1580 | 4% |
| Yale University | 1480–1580 | 5% |
| University of Chicago | 1510–1580 | 6% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1510–1580 | 4% |
| New York University | 1450–1570 | 13% |
| Columbia University | 1470–1570 | 4% |
| University of Pennsylvania | 1480–1570 | 6% |
| Stanford University | 1470–1570 | 4% |
Ranges are each college's most recently reported middle 50% for students who submitted scores, from our college database. University of California and Cal State campuses are left out because they don't consider SAT scores. Look up any college with the college SAT lookup.
The SAT reports Reading and Writing and Math separately, 200–800 each. Colleges see both, so the same 1600 can read differently for an engineering program than for an English major.
| Profile | Reading and Writing | Math |
|---|---|---|
| Even split | 800 | 800 |
Never retake a 1600. Put the time into the rest of your application.
Keep your 1600 if:
Percentiles come from the same SAT percentile table as our percentile calculator. SAT® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this page.