ScoreReady SAT
Drill by score band: 400–500 500–600 600–700 700–800

Mean, Median, and Mode · Sub-skill drill

Mode, Range, and Spread

The mode is the most frequently occurring value in a data set. The range is the difference between the maximum and minimum values. SAT questions on these statistics are usually conceptual: 'which of the following changes would increase the range without changing the median?' The answers usually involve identifying which positions in the sorted list are affected by adding, removing, or changing a value. Sketching the sorted list with positions labeled is the fastest way to reason about these questions.

How this sub-skill is tested on the SAT

The mode is the most frequently occurring value in a data set. The range is the difference between the maximum and minimum values. SAT questions on these statistics are usually conceptual: 'which of the following changes would increase the range without changing the median?' The answers usually involve identifying which positions in the sorted list are affected by adding, removing, or changing a value. Sketching the sorted list with positions labeled is the fastest way to reason about these questions.

This sub-skill sits inside the broader Mean, Median, and Mode topic, which is part of the College Board's Problem Solving & Data Analysis content domain. Problem Solving and Data Analysis is where the SAT pretends to be the real world. Every question in this domain is wrapped in context: a recipe, a survey, a clinical trial, a lab measurement, a marketing report. The math itself is rarely harder than middle-school arithmetic — ratios, proportions, percentages, unit conversions, means, medians, scatter plots, two-way tables, and basic probability. What trips students up is the reading. The College Board has spent two decades calibrating these prompts to reward students who slow down on the setup and punish students who rush to compute. ScoreRe

Practice questions in this drill set

Below are 6 practice questions targeting this exact sub-skill, ordered from easier to harder. Each question is tagged with its target score band so you can focus on questions that match the band you are working out of. Worked solutions are open by default — read each one even if you got the question right, because the way the solution is structured often reveals a faster path than the one you used.

  1. 400-500 easy

    The values 22, 17, 26, 23, 18, 27, 30, 7 were recorded in a survey. What is the median of the data set?

    1. A 30
    2. B 23
    3. C 21.25
    4. D 7
    Worked solution

    Answer: B — 23

    Order the data: 7, 17, 18, 22, 23, 26, 27, 30. With 8 values the median is the middle entry, which is 23.

    Open question q0204 in its own page →

  2. 500-600 easy

    The values 17, 12, 23, 1, 20, 3, 7, 8 were recorded in a survey. What is the median of the data set?

    1. A 23
    2. B 12
    3. C 1
    4. D 11.38
    Worked solution

    Answer: B — 12

    Order the data: 1, 3, 7, 8, 12, 17, 20, 23. With 8 values the median is the middle entry, which is 12.

    Open question q0208 in its own page →

  3. 500-600 medium

    The values 24, 18, 25, 30, 14, 2, 2, 26 were recorded in a survey. What is the median of the data set?

    1. A 24
    2. B 30
    3. C 17.63
    4. D 2
    Worked solution

    Answer: A — 24

    Order the data: 2, 2, 14, 18, 24, 25, 26, 30. With 8 values the median is the middle entry, which is 24.

    Open question q0212 in its own page →

  4. 600-700 medium

    The values 9, 26, 30, 11, 14, 29, 19, 20 were recorded in a survey. What is the median of the data set?

    1. A 30
    2. B 9
    3. C 20
    4. D 19.75
    Worked solution

    Answer: C — 20

    Order the data: 9, 11, 14, 19, 20, 26, 29, 30. With 8 values the median is the middle entry, which is 20.

    Open question q0216 in its own page →

  5. 700-800 hard

    The values 1, 29, 1, 19, 22, 29, 3, 17 were recorded in a survey. What is the median of the data set?

    1. A 19
    2. B 29
    3. C 1
    4. D 15.13
    Worked solution

    Answer: A — 19

    Order the data: 1, 1, 3, 17, 19, 22, 29, 29. With 8 values the median is the middle entry, which is 19.

    Open question q0220 in its own page →

  6. 700-800 hard

    The values 15, 4, 6, 18, 30, 20, 23, 3 were recorded in a survey. What is the median of the data set?

    1. A 30
    2. B 18
    3. C 3
    4. D 14.88
    Worked solution

    Answer: B — 18

    Order the data: 3, 4, 6, 15, 18, 20, 23, 30. With 8 values the median is the middle entry, which is 18.

    Open question q0224 in its own page →

Why this band assignment matters

Every question in this drill is tagged with a target score band — 400–500, 500–600, 600–700, or 700–800 — based on its difficulty and the patterns the College Board uses for questions at each level. If you are aiming to break out of a 580 plateau, the 600–700 questions in this drill are your highest-leverage practice. If you are chasing 750+, the 700–800 questions here are the ones that separate the top 10% of test takers from everyone else.

Use the band tags to filter your work. If you can confidently solve every 400–500 and 500–600 question without notes, move to the 600–700 set. If those land cleanly, the 700–800 set is your final boss. The worked solutions in this drill are written so that even the hardest questions become learnable patterns once you have seen the structure of the solve a few times.

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