Raw score versus scaled score
Your raw SAT math score is simply the number of questions you answered correctly across the math section — there is no penalty for wrong answers on the modern SAT, so you should always guess on questions you do not know. The College Board then converts that raw score to a scaled score on the 200 to 800 range using a process called equating. Equating is not a curve in the colloquial sense — it is not graded against the other students who took the same test as you. Instead, it adjusts for the difficulty of the specific test form you saw, so that a 700 on one administration represents the same ability as a 700 on any other administration. If your test happened to be slightly harder than average, the curve is slightly more generous; if it was slightly easier, the curve is slightly stricter.
What the curve usually looks like
Across released College Board practice tests, a scaled math score of 800 typically requires anywhere from 56 to 58 correct answers out of 58 — meaning you usually need a perfect raw score to scale to a perfect scaled score, with at most one question's worth of slack on a generously-curved test. A 750 typically requires around 53 to 54 correct, an 800 minus three or four. A 700 lands somewhere around 47 to 49 correct. A 650 is usually 41 to 43. A 600 is 35 to 37. These are rough numbers — the actual curve varies test to test. The takeaway is that there is essentially no slack at the top: if you are aiming for a 750-plus math score, you can miss perhaps four questions across the entire math section, and you cannot afford to leave any questions blank.
What is a competitive math score?
For elite STEM programs — MIT, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, Stanford engineering, the Ivy League's quantitative majors — the median admitted student's math score is typically in the 770 to 800 range. For competitive non-STEM programs at the same schools, the median is closer to 740. State flagship honors programs tend to land in the 700 to 740 range. Strong regional liberal arts colleges admit students with math scores from roughly 680 to 750. These are medians, not minimums; admits with lower scores exist, but they typically have a compelling story elsewhere in the application.
Score versus percentile
The percentile rank of an SAT math score answers a different question than the score itself: it tells you what percentage of test-takers you scored above. A 750 math score corresponds to roughly the 96th percentile nationally; a 700 is around the 92nd percentile; a 650 is around the 84th percentile; a 600 is around the 73rd percentile. These percentiles are based on the College Board's national user norms and are stable year over year. For elite university applications, however, the relevant percentile is usually the percentile within the applicant pool of the specific university — and at MIT or Caltech the percentile within the pool is much lower for the same scaled score, because the applicant pool self-selects toward high math scores.
How the digital SAT changes this
The shift to the digital SAT adaptive format does not change the 200 to 800 scoring scale, but it does change the structure beneath the score. The math section now consists of two modules of 22 questions each, and the difficulty of the second module depends on your performance on the first. This means the per-question stakes on the first module are higher than they were on the paper test — strong performance on module one routes you to a harder module two with a more generous curve at the top, while weaker module one performance routes you to an easier module two whose maximum scaled score is capped below 800. Practical implication: do not skip questions on the first module unless you genuinely cannot make progress.