What a Starting SAT or ACT Score Means, and How Far It Can Move

As of October 2026: A starting score is feedback on what to study next, not a measure of your child's intelligence. In our published results, ACT students who started at 27 or below gained 5.7 points on average, SAT students who started at 1350 or below gained 190 points, and 63% of those SAT students gained 200 points or more.

Nick Standlea on why the first score is only feedback, plus the gains our students posted and what the research says about mindset.

By Nick Standlea, Test Prep Gurus. Figures may be quoted with attribution to Test Prep Gurus.

Nick Standlea on this question -- Nick Standlea, Test Prep Gurus (YouTube).

The average ACT gain in our results was 5.7 points Among students who started at 27 or below and finished our program, the average gain was 5.7 points. That cohort is 491 students from 2017 to 2023. It is an average, so some students gained more and some gained less. The direction is still clear: a first score is a starting line, not a final one.

63% of our SAT students gained 200 points or more Among SAT students who started at 1350 or below, 63% gained at least 200 points, and the group average was 190 points. That cohort is 291 students from 2024. Nearly two out of three families in that group saw a move of 200 points or more. The other side of that number matters too: about a third did not reach 200, so no one should treat 200 as a promise.

A one-hour mindset lesson raised GPA by 0.10 points for lower-achieving ninth graders Yeager and colleagues (2019) ran a national experiment with 12,490 ninth-grade students in 65 public schools. The online lesson took less than one hour, split into two sessions of about 25 minutes each. Lower-achieving students earned core-course GPAs 0.10 grade points higher than the control group. The effect showed up when peer norms matched the message, and it did not raise grades for higher-achieving students.

What Nick says in the video: what does a starting score actually mean?

This is the transcript of Nick's own video on starting scores, recorded November 2025. We print it in full so you can read his words rather than our summary.

Transcript
What does my child's starting score actually mean? Nick's answer is that a starting score, whether it is a 17 on the ACT or a 1500 on the SAT, is feedback on what to work on and not a measure of intelligence or of where a student will go in life. He explains the apparent paradox that these tests still predict college grades, graduation and job placement, because what they reward is hard work, grit and perseverance. Recorded November 2025. Transcript Let's talk about your starting score on the SAT or the ACT. It doesn't mean anything in and of itself. If you come in with a 17 on the ACT or an 800 on the SAT, it's not a measurement of your intelligence. If you come in with a 34 on the ACT or a 1500 on the SAT, it is not a measure of your intelligence. It's also not a measure for your capacity for the future or where you might go in life. All it is is feedback on what you need to work on and what you don't need to work on in order to improve this score. In the last video we talked about long-term goals. It's really critical that you set those long-term goals in order to reframe the SAT or the ACT as simply giving you feedback on what you need to do in order to achieve the score that will get you into the colleges that will help you achieve your long-term goals. Now, these tests, while they don't tell us anything of real substance about a student, what's interesting is they are predictive of performance in college. They are highly predictive, more so than high school grades, of
your grades in college. They're also predictive of graduation rates from college, job placement after college, and graduate school placement after college. Now, this is seemingly a paradox. How can they be predictive of all these behaviors in the future but not tell us anything of substance about a student? Well, here's the answer. These tests reward hard work, grit, and perseverance. If you really put in the time and energy, your scores are going to go up. And students who figure that out, who are willing to put in the hard work and the energy into these tests to get a higher score, they do the same thing when they go to college in these different arenas. And that is what makes the test predictive of that future behavior in college. So whether you come in with an extremely low score or an extremely high score or anywhere in between, I want you to think about that as feedback. It's nothing more, nothing less, than feedback about where you currently are, areas that you have content mastery over, and areas that you need to work on to achieve that mastery. If we start to reframe these standardized tests like that, we're much better able to take the steps necessary to achieve the score you need to reach your long-term goals for the future. And that leads to higher motivation, and that leads to success. More explainers for parents: https://www.prepgurus.com/13secrets (the free 13 Secrets to College Admission guide) and https://highschoolreach.com (look up any high school's college
outcomes)

Transcript of Nick's own video. Source: https://www.prepgurus.com/explainers/what-does-my-childs-starting-score-actually-mean

How far do scores actually move? Test Prep Gurus' published results

These are the figures we publish for students who completed our program. They are averages, not guarantees, and they cover the cohorts named in the rows.

Measure	Value
ACT students starting at 27 or below: average gain	5.7 points
SAT students starting at 1350 or below: average gain	190 points
SAT students starting at 1350 or below who gain 200 points or more	63%
ACT cohort	491 students, 2017-2023
SAT cohort	291 students, 2024
Total students in the published results	782
Founded	2009

Quoted exactly as printed at prepgurus.com/results-at-test-prep-gurus; averages for students who completed the program.

What does my child's starting SAT or ACT score mean?

It means one thing: feedback on what to study next. In Nick's video, he puts it plainly. "If you come in with a 17 on the ACT or an 800 on the SAT, it's not a measurement of your intelligence." He says the same about the top of the scale. "If you come in with a 34 on the ACT or a 1500 on the SAT, it is not a measure of your intelligence."

A first score is a map of content. It shows the topics your child already owns and the topics that still need work. Nothing in that map tells you who your child is. As Nick says, "All it is is feedback on what you need to work on and what you don't need to work on in order to improve this score."

Parents tend to read the first score as a verdict. Nick is clear that the number is not a measure of a student's capacity for the future. A teenager who reads the same number as a to-do list has something to act on instead.

The practical move is simple. Sit down with the score report and sort the content into two piles: solid and shaky. The shaky pile is the start of the study plan. That is the whole meaning of the number, and it is enough.

How many points can a starting score move?

In our published results, ACT students who started at 27 or below gained 5.7 points on average, and SAT students who started at 1350 or below gained 190 points on average. Those are the two headline numbers in our results table.

The cohorts behind them are not small. The ACT figure comes from 491 students between 2017 and 2023. The SAT figure comes from 291 students in 2024. Together, the published results cover 782 students.

There is a second number that families ask about most: 63% of the SAT students who started at 1350 or below gained 200 points or more. That is close to two out of three. It also means a little over one in three did not reach that mark, which is the honest limit on the claim.

Read all of these as averages for students who completed the program. They are not a promise for any one child. A student who does not finish the program sits outside the group these numbers describe. What the figures do show is that a first score is a long way from a final score.

Why do these tests predict college grades if they do not measure intelligence?

Nick's answer is that the tests reward hard work, grit and perseverance, and those habits carry into college. He calls it a seeming paradox and then resolves it in the video.

Here is his framing of the puzzle. The tests, he says, "are predictive of performance in college. They are highly predictive, more so than high school grades, of your grades in college." He adds that they also track with "graduation rates from college, job placement after college, and graduate school placement after college."

Then comes the resolution. "These tests reward hard work, grit, and perseverance. If you really put in the time and energy, your scores are going to go up." Students who figure that out, he says, do the same thing in college. The habit travels, not the trait.

For a parent, this reframe changes the whole project. You are not trying to prove your child is smart. You are coaching a habit of steady effort that a test happens to measure. That habit is the part that keeps paying after the score report is filed away.

Does mindset really change outcomes, or is that just a pep talk?

Yeager and colleagues (2019), in a national experiment published in Nature, found that a short online growth-mindset lesson raised core-course GPA by 0.10 grade points for lower-achieving ninth graders. The study included 12,490 ninth-grade students, individually randomized across 65 public schools.

The lesson itself was short. The researchers describe "a short (less than one hour), online growth mindset intervention," delivered in two sessions of about 25 minutes each. That is a small amount of time for a measured change in grades.

The size of the effect is small in plain terms. A 0.10 grade-point gain will not turn a C student into an A student by itself. The study reports that gain with a 95% confidence interval of 0.04 to 0.16 grade points.

We bring this up for one reason. How your child reads the first score is not a soft side issue. Yeager and colleagues (2019) show that a short lesson about ability can shift real grades. The way you talk about a low first score at the kitchen table is part of the work.

When does a growth mindset not help?

Yeager and colleagues (2019) found the lesson did not raise grades for higher-achieving students, and among lower-achieving students the grade effect depended on supportive peer norms. Context mattered as much as the message.

The researchers put it this way: "the intervention changed grades when peer norms aligned with the messages of the intervention." When peer norms lined up with the message, the grade effect showed up. When they did not, the study did not find that effect.

That is an important limit, and we will not oversell it. One video or one talk is not the same as a school culture. The study is clear that the grade effect among lower-achieving students depended on the norms around them.

There was one result that held across achievement levels. The study found the intervention increased advanced-math enrollment across achievement levels. So the message appears to affect what students choose to take on, even where it does not move the grade.

For families, the takeaway is modest and useful. Mindset work helps most when the people around your child back it up. That includes you, the study partner, and the tutor who sees the practice tests every week.

Is a low starting score a reason to give up on a target college?

No. The 5.7-point average ACT gain in our results came from students who started at 27 or below, which is exactly the group that worries most about target lists.

Think about what a 5.7-point average gain means for planning. It is a real move, and it came from students who began in the lower half of the scale. The same holds on the SAT side, where the average gain for students starting at 1350 or below was 190 points, and 63% of that group gained 200 points or more.

Nick says the first score is "not a measure for your capacity for the future or where you might go in life." The list you build in the fall does not have to be the list you keep in the spring, because the score behind it can change.

The better order of operations is to set the long-term goal first, then work backward. In the video, Nick says setting long-term goals lets a family "reframe the SAT or the ACT as simply giving you feedback." The college list sets the target score. The target score sets the study plan. The starting score tells you how much content is left to cover.

So we would not cut a school from the list based on one early practice test. Give the work a full cycle before you decide anything.

What should I say to my child after a disappointing first score?

Say the thing Nick says in the video: the score is "nothing more, nothing less, than feedback about where you currently are." Then move straight to the content, not the feelings about the content.

Avoid two sentences that make things worse. The first is "you're better than this," which turns the number into a judgment of character. The second is "it's fine, the tests don't matter," which tells your child that effort would be pointless.

Instead, name the two piles. Here is what you already have mastery over. Here is what you need to work on. Nick describes the goal as knowing the "areas that you have content mastery over, and areas that you need to work on to achieve that mastery."

Then set the plan against a real calendar. We do not publish a timeline for how fast a gain arrives, so we will not name one. The 491 ACT students and 291 SAT students in our results completed a full program.

One more thing helps. Keep the number inside the family and the tutoring sessions. A score that stays in that circle is easier to treat as a work tool. Yeager and colleagues (2019) found that peer norms shape whether effort messages stick.

How long does it take to move a score, and who are these gains for?

Our published figures describe students who completed the program, and the ACT cohort spans 2017 to 2023 while the SAT cohort covers 2024. Those date ranges matter more than families expect.

The gains in our table came from students who finished the work: diagnostics, drilling the weak content, and timed practice tests. The results page reports the end result, not the pace.

We do not publish a week-by-week timeline, and we will not invent one. What we publish is the end result for 782 students across both tests. That is the honest shape of the evidence.

There is also a selection point to be fair about. These are students who finished. A family that stops early is not in the sample, so the averages describe students who completed the program rather than everyone who walks in the door.

If you want a real read on where your child stands today, start with a full-length practice test under timed conditions. A score from a quiet room with a clock is feedback you can plan around. A score from a guess is not.

Does a high starting score mean my child can coast?

No. Nick is explicit that a 34 on the ACT or a 1500 on the SAT "is not a measure of your intelligence" either, and the same feedback logic applies at the top of the scale.

A strong first score still leaves content gaps on the report. The test rewards hard work, grit and perseverance, as Nick puts it, so the plan for a high scorer is still built from the gaps.

There is a research note here too. Yeager and colleagues (2019) found the mindset lesson did not raise grades for higher-achieving students. The same study found the lesson increased advanced-math enrollment across achievement levels.

So the goal for a high scorer shifts. It is less about squeezing out points and more about the work habit that college will ask for. Nick's point is that students who learn to put in the time do the same thing in college, in graduation, and in job placement.

Treat a 1500 the way you would treat a much lower score: as a content map with a few gaps on it. Close the gaps, keep the habit, and stop talking about the number as proof of anything.

Should we pick the SAT or the ACT based on the first score?

Pick the test where the content gaps look easier to close, and note that our published results cover both: 491 ACT students and 291 SAT students. We do not treat one test as the smart choice for everyone.

Both score reports do the same job. They sort content into what your child has mastery over and what still needs work. A student can read either report and build a plan from it in an afternoon.

The honest way to compare is to sit two timed practice tests, one of each, and look at the gaps rather than the headline number. We do not compare one test's score against the other here. What we compare is the list of skills.

Our results show real movement on both sides. ACT students who began at 27 or below gained 5.7 points on average. SAT students who began at 1350 or below gained 190 points on average, and 63% of them gained 200 points or more.

So the choice is not about which test your child is naturally built for. It is about which set of gaps your child can close with the months left on the calendar. Then stay with that test and finish the plan.

What does Nick Standlea bring to this answer?

Nick founded Test Prep Gurus in 2009 and was a Research Associate at the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University, under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. That background shapes how he reads a first score.

Work on motivation and engagement starts from a simple idea. People do their best work when the task is a clear challenge they can meet with effort. Nick's video applies that idea to the score report.

That is why the video keeps coming back to one word. Nick says a starting score is "nothing more, nothing less, than feedback about where you currently are." He then ties that reframe to motivation: "that leads to higher motivation, and that leads to success."

The published results sit underneath the idea. Since 2009 we have worked with families on both tests, and the results page covers 782 students across the two cohorts. The numbers are the record of what the reframe plus the hours produce.

You do not have to take the philosophy on faith. Read the transcript above, read the table, and decide if the approach fits your family.

What do I do with the score report this month?

Turn it into a two-column list before the week ends. Column one is content your child has mastery over. Column two is content that needs work, and that column becomes the study plan.

Set the long-term goal above the list. Nick says in the video that long-term goals are what let a student see the test "as simply giving you feedback on what you need to do in order to achieve the score that will get you into the colleges that will help you achieve your long-term goals."

Then pick a real test date and count back. Our results come from students who completed a full program, with 491 students on the ACT side from 2017 to 2023 and 291 on the SAT side in 2024. Those gains took a plan with a calendar attached.

Keep the tone steady at home. Yeager and colleagues (2019) found that peer norms shape whether an effort message holds. The people closest to your child are part of that picture.

The move: take a free mock SAT or a free mock ACT this month, so the plan starts from a real timed score instead of a guess. Call us at 949.229.5359 or start at https://www.prepgurus.com/take-the-next-step. We have been doing this since 2009, and the first score is where the work starts, not where it ends.

Questions parents ask

What does a first SAT or ACT score actually tell us?
It means one thing: feedback on what to study next.

How many points do students usually gain?
In our published results, ACT students who started at 27 or below gained 5.7 points on average, and SAT students who started at 1350 or below gained 190 points on average.

How many students gained 200 SAT points or more?
There is a second number that families ask about most: 63% of the SAT students who started at 1350 or below gained 200 points or more.

If the tests do not measure intelligence, why do they predict college grades?
Nick's answer is that the tests reward hard work, grit and perseverance, and those habits carry into college.

Is there research that mindset changes grades?
Yeager and colleagues (2019), in a national experiment published in Nature, found that a short online growth-mindset lesson raised core-course GPA by 0.10 grade points for lower-achieving ninth graders.

When does a growth mindset fail to help?
Yeager and colleagues (2019) found the lesson did not raise grades for higher-achieving students, and among lower-achieving students the grade effect depended on supportive peer norms.

Should a low first score change our college list?
No. The 5.7-point average ACT gain in our results came from students who started at 27 or below, which is exactly the group that worries most about target lists.

What should I say after a disappointing score?
Say the thing Nick says in the video: the score is "nothing more, nothing less, than feedback about where you currently are."

Method and sources: The score-gain figures come from Test Prep Gurus' published results page and cover students who completed our program: 491 ACT students from 2017 to 2023 and 291 SAT students in 2024, for 782 students in total. They are group averages for completers, so students who stopped early are not in the sample, and no single student is promised the average. The mindset findings come from Yeager and colleagues, "A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement," Nature 573, 364-369 (2019), a randomized study of 12,490 ninth graders in 65 public schools. The transcript row is Nick Standlea's own video, recorded November 2025, printed in full and unedited. We do not have a published week-by-week timeline for how long a given gain takes, and we do not estimate one here.