The College Board has released national and South Carolina specific results for their SAT and Advanced Placement assessments. South Carolina students again exceeded the nation on eight out of the top ten tested subjects of Advanced Placement exams. 64% of South Carolina public school graduates from the Class of 2020 took the SAT during high school mirroring the Class of 2019.

"Despite the obstacles brought on by COVID-19 that forced the closure of school facilities across South Carolina last school year, our students perservered and yet again earned national distinction on Advanced Placement," said State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman. "While SAT scores remained stagnant, we were pleased to see steady participation from our graduating class. We know that access to test taking sites remains an issue and will be doing all that we can to ensure any high school student who needs to take a college entrance exam can do so with the cost covered by the state."

Advanced Placement (AP) South Carolina saw a slight decrease in the number of AP exams taken, the number of exams with scores of 3, 4, or 5, and number of students taking exams.

• The number of students taking exams was 30,443.
• The number of exams taken decreased 6.4% to 49,727.
• The number of AP exams with scores of 3, 4, or 5 decreased 0.5% to 30,945 exams.

AP exam scores of 3 indicate a candidate who is qualified to take college-level courses. Scores of 4 indicate someone who is well qualified and a 5 indicates someone who is extremely well qualified. Colleges and universities often grant class credit and use AP scores of three or more to place students in higher course levels.

South Carolina students outperformed the national average in percentage of exams with scores of three or more on eight of the top ten most popular Advanced Placement tested subjects.   SAT A total of 27,673 South Carolina public school students or 64% of the Class of 2020 took the SAT assessment, a 2% decrease from 2019. 

Students from the Class of 2020 are the second cohort to participate in South Carolina's student choice college entrance exam program. Beginning in the 2017-2018 school year, all South Carolina juniors were offered an opportunity to take a state-funded college entrance exam (either the SAT or ACT) which were administered during the school day. The College Board notes that school day test administrations eliminate barriers and simplify the test day experience for students, which makes the SAT accessible to students who would not or could not have tested on a weekend. SAT School Day also increases diversity in the test-taking population by making it possible for more low-income students, underrepresented minority students, and students from families with no history of college attendance to take the SAT.

The SAT relies on two main components, Evidence Based Reading and Writing (ERW) and Math. The Essay section is optional. Scores range from 400 to 1600 overall with 200 to 800 coming from ERW and 200 - 800 coming from Math.

South Carolina's public school students overall mean score was 1019 compared with the national public school mean of 1030. SC's mean ERW score was 519 compared to the national mean of 520. The state's Math average score was 499 while the nation's was 510.

African American student participation accounted for 23% of all test takers compared to the national participation rate of 13%.

SAT Data 2020: https://ed.sc.gov/data/test-scores/national-assessments/sat/