SCAT - School & College Ability Test

Timing

Be sure to register your child for the CTY SCAT with Prometric (either online or by phone at 800-688-5796). You may pay the $60.00 fee by credit card or electronic check. For CTY summer programs, students must take the SCAT as early as possible, as registration for summer programs starts in January. All other students must take the test by the end of June. Learn more about the SCAT.

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Test Structure

There are three different levels of the CTY SCAT:

1. Elementary SCAT - 2nd and 3rd grade students take the Elementary SCAT, which is designed for 4th-6th graders. The test is scored in comparison to 4th and 5th graders, respectively.

2. Intermediate SCAT - 4th and 5th grade students take the Intermediate SCAT, which is designed for 6th-9th graders. The test is scored in comparison to 6th-9th graders.

3. Advanced SCAT - 6th-8th graders take the Advanced SCAT, which is designed for 9th-12th graders. The test is scored in comparison to 9th - 12th graders.

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The SCAT has a verbal and quantitative section, each with 55 questions.  On the test, 50 questions from each section are graded and 5 are experimental items that do not count towards the final score. Students have 22 minutes to complete each section. They are given a 10-minute break between sections. There is no penalty for wrong answers so it is okay to guess. 

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Content

The two sections of the SCAT test are Verbal and Quantitative. The verbal section uses verbal reasoning to complete analogies, and the quantitative section uses mathematical reasoning to complete questions. All questions in both sections are multiple choice.

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1. Verbal

The verbal section measures your child’s understanding of the meaning of words and verbal reasoning ability. Verbal questions are multiple-choice analogies, which require a student to choose the best pair of words to complete an analogy. It may appear that more than one answer fits the analogy, but the correct answer is the one that best completes the analogy. To do well on this section, your child will need strong vocabulary, verbal reasoning, and knowledge/information abilities.

 

2. Quantitative

The quantitative section measures your child’s understanding of foundational number operations. The quantitative questions are multiple-choice mathematical comparisons, which require a student to compare two mathematical quantities and determine which is greater. Problems are intended to measure mathematical reasoning ability, so they do not require computation. To do well on this section, your child will need to have a strong understanding of mathematical reasoning, math facts, calculations and number operations.

 

Scoring

The CTY SCAT scores are calculated in three steps: 

 

1. Raw Score

The raw score is calculated by tallying the total number of questions answered correctly out of the 50 scored questions. For example, if a child correctly answered 27 out of 50 questions, his or her raw score is 27/50. 

 

2. Scaled Score

Once the raw score is calculated, it is converted into a common scaled score. This is what allows administrators to properly compare various scores to each other. Scaled scores range from 400 to 514, according to the test version. The purpose of a scaled score is to compare a student’s score to other students within his or her grade level. Scaled scores are finally converted into SCAT Score Percentiles: