Are there really that many kids getting perfect scores?

I got a pretty low/average score, but took the test early in junior year so I hadn't taken some of the more advanced math courses yet. I never took it again since I got into everywhere I applied to (didn't apply to ivy league, obviously). Seemed like most other kids I knew did similarly with the smartest kids maybe 150 points higher (2400 time-frame). Nobody I know got a perfect score, or even close to it.

Edit: man, after talking about this I want to see what my score was exactly. No way am I paying $30 for an archived score though. I want to say it was only 1200/1600 (the schools only wanted 2 of the sections). But I'm not sure I trust my memory for something so inconsequential from that long ago.

Extra edit: found my old score report. It's worse than I thought. The writing was 570 (74th percentile) and math was 510 (47th percentile). I'm a lot dumber than I remember.

I guess not exactly. But still looks pretty crowded at the top end: https://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/Harvard-SAT-score...

Looks like it's 1% between 1550-1600. I couldn't find stats for an actual perfect score. Saying it's crowded I guess is ok, but is a matter of perspective. Like the top 1% of income earners saying their yacht club is crowded. Maybe true, but only for a very small number of people who could choose to go somewhere else if they actually wanted to.

http://go.collegewise.com/how-many-people-get-a-perfect-sat-...

Yeah no the study was definitely not about test prep getting people from 2370 to 2400 lmao. There is no test prep service in the world that will claim they can get you from a 2370 - 2400.

The mean SAT score is ~1600, so it's a 30 point increase for students scoring in that range.

If you're already capable of getting a 2350+, that means you know everything and it's just down to variance and not making a silly mistake.

A perfect 2400 score is actually really rare. From a stat in 2009, the collegeboard reported that 1 student out of every 5,000 taking the SAT gets a 2400.

I took it back when it was out of 1600 and missed a perfect by one question; however I don't think I was exceptionally brilliant or anything.

The SAT does not operate in the way the LSAT or some other computerized tests work where it keeps giving you harder and harder questions until you start getting them wrong.

I suspect more people could get a 2400 if those who get really close bother retaking it.

> So many kids get perfect 2400 scores

"So many" being ~500 out of a population of ~7 million or so

But test prep is marketed to people who are average or below average. Saying you can gain hundreds of points is clearly misleading/deceptive advertising.