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Public Domain · 1926

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT): Most consequential US standardized test

The most consequential standardized test in American education. Carl Brigham at Princeton developed the SAT in 1925-26, adapting items from the Army Alpha (he had served on the Alpha committee) for college admissions use. The first SAT was administered to 8,040 students in June 1926. Today the College Board administers 2-3 million SAT administrations annually; SAT scores remain a major component of US college admissions decisions.

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About the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)

Carl Brigham had served on the Army Alpha committee during WWI alongside Robert Yerkes, Lewis Terman, Edward Thorndike, and others. After the war he took a position at Princeton, where he became interested in adapting Alpha-style group cognitive testing for college admissions. In 1925-26 he developed the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for the College Entrance Examination Board.

The first SAT was administered to 8,040 students in June 1926. It had nine subtests (Definitions, Arithmetic Problems, Classification, Artificial Language, Antonyms, Number Series, Analogies, Logical Inference, Paragraph Reading) - all directly derived from Army Alpha methodology. Testing time was 90 minutes. Scores were reported on a single composite scale.

The SAT went through major revisions in 1942 (essay test dropped, multiple-choice consolidated), 1959 (verbal-quantitative split formalized), 1995 (recentering of norms), 2005 (writing section added), 2016 (writing section made optional, scoring rescaled), and 2024 (digital administration). The 1959 verbal+quantitative split is the format people remember as 'the SAT'; the 2016 changes brought it back closer to that format with updated content.

The SAT has had enormous social consequences. From 1933 (when Harvard adopted it) onward, the SAT became the dominant US college admissions instrument, eventually administered to essentially every college-bound American student. It has been the subject of decades of controversy about cultural fairness, predictive validity for college performance, and the social mobility implications of standardized testing. The SAT is the most-discussed and most-studied standardized test in the world.

About this interactive version: SAT items remain under College Board copyright. We have a public-domain page for the Army Alpha (1918) - the direct methodological ancestor of the SAT.

The 2 subtests

#1
1926 form: 9 subtests Definitions, Arithmetic Problems, Classification, Artificial Language, Antonyms, Number Series, Analogies, Logical Inference, Paragraph Reading.
Copyrighted
#2
Modern form (Verbal + Math) Reading comprehension + writing/language; mathematics with and without calculator.
Copyrighted

Take the full 215-item test

Original 1926 SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) by Carl Brigham, College Board. 315 items in 9 subtests in 97 minutes. Public domain in the US (pre-1929). Most items were verbal-analogy, antonym, sentence-completion, paragraph-meaning, classification, arithmetic.

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About these items: These Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) items are originally-written reconstructions in the tradition of the original 1926 test, NOT verbatim copies of the historical items. Where the original is a 1-on-1 oral or physical-apparatus test (e.g., examiner shows a card, child draws a shape), we have adapted the format to self-administered multiple choice.

Sample Items (Illustrative)

Items are typically presented in a multiple-choice or short-answer format, scored based on correct responses. Each item is designed to measure specific cognitive skills such as vocabulary, mathematical reasoning, or reading comprehension.

Sample 1 · Definitions
Define the word 'perseverance'.
Example response: Continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.
Sample 2 · Arithmetic Problems
If a train travels 60 miles in 1.5 hours, what is its average speed in miles per hour?
Example response: 40 miles per hour
Sample 3 · Analogies
Hand is to glove as foot is to: (a) shoe, (b) hat, (c) scarf, (d) belt
Example response: (a) shoe
Sample 4 · Logical Inference
All roses are flowers. Some flowers fade quickly. Therefore, some roses fade quickly. Is this conclusion (a) true, (b) false, (c) uncertain?
Example response: (c) uncertain
Sample 5 · Paragraph Reading
Read the following paragraph and answer the question: 'The sun sets in the west, casting long shadows across the fields. As the day ends, the temperature drops, and the air becomes crisp.' What happens to the temperature as the sun sets?
Example response: The temperature drops.

These are illustrative samples, not actual items from the protected test.

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Carl C. Brigham (1926). Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

SAT items remain under College Board copyright. We document the test's history.

Cite this page

This page is part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content, transcription notes, and curation are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Public-domain primary sources retain their public-domain status. BibTeX · RIS · CSL JSON

Historical test materials are obsolete and are not valid modern IQ assessments. This page is preserved for educational, research, and historiographic purposes.

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The instrument documented above is a historical document. Modern IQ scoring uses contemporary norms (mean 100, SD 15). Our free full IQ test is available separately.