Smarty-pants students experience SAT twist: 2,400 is the new 1,600

There’s an elite new club: students who scored a flawless 2,400 on the new SAT.

When the college entrance exam expanded from two sections to three this year, the mark required for perfection rose from 1,600 to 2,400. This week, as the 300,000 students who took the first sitting of the new test March 12 began receiving scores, the College Board reported that 107 scored a perfect 800 on each of the three sections – writing, critical reading and math.

The College Board, which owns the SAT, confirmed the number of perfect scores but has not yet publicly released detailed information about how all the test-takers did. Educators are curious whether student performance on the new test will, as the College Board has pledged, be comparable to the old.

Of the 1.4 million 2004 high school graduates who took the old SAT, 939 scored a then-perfect 1,600. The percentage of test-takers who hit triple-perfection on the new test in March is about half that.