Decoding Raw Score Calculation?

This might sound dumb but I'm a little confused about raw scores. Can someone explain how to calculate a raw score?

Not a dumb question at all! In the context of standardized tests, a raw score is the total number of questions answered correctly without taking into consideration the difficulty level of the questions.

For instance, if you took a practice SAT in Reading and Writing and correctly answered 45 questions out of the 54, your raw score for that section would be 45. Simple as that! For the Math section, if you correctly answered 40 out of 44 questions, your raw score for the Math division would be 40.

However, keep in mind that your raw score is not the final score that you will see on your SAT score report. That's because the raw score goes through a process called equating, which adjusts the score based on the difficulty level of the test to ensure that scores are comparable across different test dates. This is where the raw-to-scaled conversion tables come in handy, which can be found in the answer explanations of official test prep books.

To sum it up, raw scores don't translate directly into your final reported scores, but they serve as the steppingstone to convert into scaled scores.

Remember, the more practice tests you work on, the more comfortable you will become with the scoring system. Wishing you all the best in your preparations!