How to use the test score cutoff band calculator
Plenty of decisions in U.S. admissions hang on a published number: an honors college that asks for a 1380, a merit award with three tiers, a state guarantee with a floor. Enter your SAT or ACT score and the list of cutoffs the program publishes, and this calculator tells you which band the score clears, by how much, and how many points the next band up would take.
No cutoff list is built in, and that is deliberate. Cutoffs belong to individual scholarships, honors programs and state policies, and they are revised from cycle to cycle. A table baked into a page would be wrong for most of the people reading it. Copy the numbers straight from the program page, highest first. Lines can be a bare number or a name and a comma before the number, so a tiered award can be entered as it is written on the page.
Every cutoff is read as at or above. A 1400 cutoff is cleared by exactly 1400, and the margin then shows as 0 points rather than a near miss. The score range is checked against the test you pick, so an ACT composite is held to 1 through 36 and an SAT total to 400 through 1600.
Percentiles are not calculated here: this tool compares your score against the cutoffs you type in and nothing else. It also says nothing about your odds of admission, which for most U.S. colleges rest on a holistic review rather than a score threshold.
Frequently asked questions
Score cutoffs are set by each scholarship, honors college or state program and they change from year to year. Any list built into a calculator would be wrong for most readers, so the cutoffs are an input you copy from the program page.
You are in that band. Cutoffs are read as at or above, so a 1400 cutoff is cleared by a 1400 and the margin shows as 0 points.
Yes. Write a name and a comma before each cutoff, as in Presidential, 1450. Lines with a number only are numbered automatically as Band 1, Band 2 and so on.