By You’ve kept to your study plan, done the practice tests, timed yourself, hyped yourself up for test day and walked out feeling confident that your score reflects your efforts. A couple weeks go by and scores are being released, so you eagerly log on to College Board find out how hard you’re celebrating tonight.
Everything leads up to this moment, and boom: your score is “under review”. What does that even mean? What’s happening? Did you do something wrong?
Not necessarily. College Board flags a small percentage of tests every cycle for review, to ensure that all scores are valid, accurate, and fair, using statistical analysis. Scores are most often flagged for unusual agreement among answer sheets for students who took the same version of the test. This means that correct and incorrect answers on multiple tests are very similar, which is statistically unlikely, but not necessarily impossible.
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College Board will never flag scores based on personal details such as race or gender because those specifications are not included during the grading process. Only your student ID number differentiates your answer sheet from others to eliminate any bias. A large score increase is also not always a reason for alarm at College Board. They recognize the hard work students put in to raise their scores, and large increases are typically celebrated.
While it is somewhat common for scores to be under review, it is much less common for College Board to cancel a score. Every student is given the benefit of the doubt during the review process, and substantial evidence of cheating or other dishonesty is needed to actually invalidate an SAT score.
College Board looks at a variety of things to determine if your answer sheet is invalid. If you’ve had scores cancelled in the past and your answer sheet is suspiciously similar to another student’s, it’s an automatic red flag to College Board. That is not a list you want to be on.
This is a prime example why cheating on the SAT will affect you long term. Not only are you missing out on the wealth of knowledge you could have gained from doing the studying and taking the test yourself, the consequences of cheating are dire. You could lose college acceptances, land yourself on watch lists for future College Board sponsored tests, and depending on the scale of the cheating, even face legal repercussions.
It’s so much easier to just study and take the test yourself, rather than dealing with all the consequences of getting caught being dishonest. If you need help targeting your weaknesses and making an infallible study plan, think about getting an SAT tutor to help you maximize your score the honest way.
Along the same lines, if your answers match other students “to an unusual degree” in addition to matching a cheat sheet that is circulating, your score will be flagged. This isn’t College Board’s first rodeo; they know all the tricks students think they’ll get away with.
Using a cheat sheet, even if its just to study, is still considered academic dishonesty, and your scores could be cancelled. Again, and I can’t say this enough, its better to just buckle down and do the work to master the material on the test. Official practice tests are a great way to get an idea of what kind of concepts you need to know in order to do well on the SAT.
Not only will doing the work yourself help you on the SAT, it will certainly help you in college and beyond. Rather than taking the shortcut, you’ll know the material and you can apply what you’ve mastered to your future, past your SAT test date. You don’t get much long term gain out of cheating. Also, its lame and you just shouldn’t do it.
What Else Could Have Gone Wrong?
I know what you’re thinking: “My score is under review and I didn’t cheat, so what the heck?!” It’s totally possible that you did nothing wrong, and your score is still under review for College Board to verify. We’ll go over what you can do about it in a second, but first let’s talk about the importance of showing your work!
Your score may have been flagged because you have no scratch work in your test booklet. Maybe you’re a genius who doesn’t need to do scratch work, or maybe you’re someone who just doesn’t like to leave a trace. Either way, no scratch work is a red flag to College Board because they’re expecting students to need to work out the questions, especially during the math tests.
It can be alarming to have all correct answers and no work to show for it. We’ve all gotten that note back from our math teacher with a giant “Show your work!!” in red pen. Sure, its tedious and annoying if you don’t need to do it to get the right answer, but just do it anyway. Show your work and you can avoid all kinds of nonsense from College Board trying to determine how you got to all those correct answers.
Most of the time, College Board won’t find any of the above things, but if they do, they’ll look for any additional reasons your score may be deemed invalid. If they don’t find any additional evidence of tomfoolery, your score will be released and you can get on with your life. However, if they do find more questionable circumstances, they will open the door up for student input and clarification that could help determine the validity of your SAT score.
How to Help College Board Validate Your Score
In the event that College Board can’t determine your score’s validity, they may ask you to provide any evidence that your score is legit. Any information about your academic background, including transcripts, other standardized test scores, grades, or even evidence of your test prep, like a reference from your tutor could help.
These things will set a benchmark for about how well you should do on the SAT, and if your score is in that range, there’s a good chance it could be validated. College Board makes a point to celebrate large score increases, they don’t want to invalidate your score, they just have a duty to colleges and other hardworking students to make sure its legit.
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If your help is needed to validate your score, you may also be invited to retake the SAT for free at your convenience. Most students can replicate their first score withing 120-150 points. You won’t be expected to score exactly the same, each SAT is different in specific content and difficulty, after all. However, if you score within a reasonable range of the score under review, College Board may be able to validate your SAT that way. You can prove that your abilities are the same across different tests.
If all else fails, you do have the right to a hearing with a neutral third party. The American Arbitration Association will assign an independent party to hear both sides to help determine whether your score is valid or not.
This is kind of a last chance effort in order to validate your score, and very few cases come to this point. If your score is stuck in the under-review limbo for too long, you also have the option to request to cancel your score and receive a full refund. From there, you can either take the SAT again or take a swing at the ACT since most colleges accept either score for admission.
What Should I Take Away From This?
Obviously, don’t cheat on the SAT. It’s a headache for everyone involved and the consequences of getting caught could affect you long term. If you didn’t cheat on the SAT but your score is under review, then you probably have nothing to worry about. There are a few ways you can help validate your score if it comes to it, but most likely it will work itself out. Just be patient and don’t worry too much until its time to worry.
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