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Following are the kinds of courses you need to take while in high school and the number of years you need to take them. You should work to consistently make strong grades in these courses.

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SAT Score Comparison for Admission to Illinois Colleges

A Side-by-Side Comparison of SAT Admissions Data for Illinois Colleges

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• Ph.D., English, University of Pennsylvania
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What SAT scores do you need to get into one of the top Illinois colleges and universities? The handy side-by-side comparison table below shows SAT scores for the middle 50% of enrolled students. If your scores fall within or above these ranges, you're on target for admission to one of these top colleges in Illinois .

Illinois Colleges SAT Score Comparison (mid 50%) ( Learn what these numbers mean )

Note:  Augustana College  and  Knox College  are not included in this table due to their policy of test-optional admissions.

View the ACT version of this table

For other Illinois colleges, select a school on my huge list of college admission profiles. Also, keep in mind that SAT scores are just one part of the application. The admissions officers at these Illinois colleges will also want to see a strong academic record , a winning essay , meaningful extracurricular activities and good letters of recommendation . You'll also notice that some of the colleges don't require SAT scores at all.

Click on the "see graph" links to the right of each row to get a visual sense of how other applicants fared at these schools. There, you might find that a student with lower test scores was admitted to the school, or that a student with higher scores was rejected. Since most of these school have holistic admissions, scores are just one part of the application. Make sure that the rest of your application is strong, and don't rely on your test scores to carry you.

If your scores are lower than you'd like, and you have enough time, it is possible to retake the SAT. Sometimes the school will let you submit your original scores with you application, and you can resubmit your newer, higher scores later on.

If you're interested in seeing a profile of any of these schools, just click on their names in the table above. There, you'll find helpful information for prospective students about admissions, enrollment, financial aid, popular majors, athletics, and more!

To learn more about SAT scores for different types of colleges, check out these articles:

SAT Comparison Charts: Ivy League | top universities | top liberal arts | top engineering ​|  top public universities | top public liberal arts colleges | University of California campuses | Cal State campuses | SUNY campuses | more SAT charts

SAT Tables for Other States: AL  | AK  | AZ  | AR  | CA  | CO  | CT  | DE  | DC  | FL  | GA  | HI  | ID  | IL | IN  | IA  | KS  | KY  | LA  | ME  | MD  | MA  | MI  | MN  | MS  | MO  | MT  | NE  | NV  | NH  | NJ  | NM  | NY  | NC  | ND  | OH  | OK  | OR  | PA  | RI  | SC  | SD  | TN  | TX  | UT  | VT  | VA  | WA  | WV  | WI  | WY

Data from the National Center for Educational Statistics

• SAT Score Comparison for Admission to Delaware Colleges
• ACT Score Comparison for Admission to Illinois Colleges
• SAT Score Comparison for Admission to Alaska Colleges
• Comparison of SAT Scores for the University of California Campuses
• ACT Scores for Admission to Top Colleges
• SAT Score Comparison for Admission to California Colleges
• SAT Scores for Admission to the Senior Colleges of CUNY
• ACT Scores for Admission to Top Public Universities
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• SAT Scores Needed for Admission to Top Engineering Schools
• SAT and ACT Scores for Admission to Top Public Liberal Arts Colleges
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• SAT Scores for Ivy League Admissions
• SAT Scores for Admission to 30 Top Liberal Arts Colleges
• SAT Scores for Admission to Top Universities
• ACT Score Comparison for Top Universities

To Be ‘Proficient’ in Illinois, You Have to Be More Than College-Ready

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Corrected : An earlier version of this story suggested that Michigan uses the ACT. It uses the SAT.

Illinois has decided that in order to be considered “proficient” on its statewide high school test, students will have to earn a higher score on the SAT than the one that’s correlated with college readiness.

The decision has touched a nerve in national testing debates about how states should meaningfully measure high school achievement and report it clearly to parents.

As part of its work to create an accountability system for its schools, the Illinois state board of education decided last month that students will be deemed proficient if they score 540 on each section of the SAT, the exam Illinois uses to measure high school achievement.

Each section of the college-admissions exam is scored from 200 to 800. The College Board considers students “college ready” if they score 480 in English and 530 in math. That means they have a 75 percent chance of earning a C or better in entry-level, credit-bearing college classes.

Other than influencing their chances of college admission, scores below the 540 cutoff won’t affect Illinois students, since their grades and graduation are not linked to their scores.

But Illinois schools have a lot on the line in the new plan; their students’ average SAT scores will count for 20 percent of their academic rating in the report card Illinois issues for each public school.

And early signs suggest cause for concern. In the first statewide administration of the SAT, in the spring of 2017, Illinois juniors averaged a 512 in English/language arts, so only 39.8 percent met the 540 cutoff score. In the math, their average score was 504. Only 36.4 percent met the SAT score cutoff.

“I worry about my colleagues who feel the pressure to maintain their ratings. This could be a black mark on their records,” said Kevin O’Mara, the executive director of the High School District Organization of Illinois, which represents the superintendents of the state’s 140 high school-only school districts.

Setting the proficiency cutoff at a level that exceeds the SAT’s own college-readiness benchmarks was “a poor decision,” he said, and one that is likely to confuse parents.

“How do you explain to parents that the College Board considers your kid college-ready, but our state board says they didn’t make the cut?” O’Mara said.

How High is ‘Proficient’?

The 540 cutoff scores were set by panels of educators who were brought together to dive into the state’s academic standards and determine the level of achievement on the SAT that best reflects mastery of those standards, A. Rae Clementz, the state board’s director of assessment and accountability, said in an interview. That level turned out to be higher than the College Board’s college-readiness score, she said.

To see whether their recommendations were reasonable, they examined how proficiency rates would compare to rates on tests students already take, such as PARCC, which Illinois uses to measure achievement in grades 3-8, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, Clementz said.

The panelists found, for example, that with a 540 SAT cutoff, 36.3 percent of students would score proficient in math. Currently, 32.3 percent of 8th grade students score proficient on the math portion of the PARCC exam. With a 540 score cutoff in English, 39.7 percent are projected to score proficient on the SAT, slightly higher than the 37.4 percent of 8th graders who reach that range on PARCC.

Clementz acknowledged in a webinar that the state “will need to do considerable messaging” to clear up confusion between the College Board’s definition of college readiness and the scores that Illinois decided reflect mastery of the state’s academic expectations.

Scott Marion, the executive director of the Center for Assessment, which advises states on testing issues, said a move like Illinois’ comes with benefits and risks.

On one hand, it signals high expectations, but it also “could backfire if schools’ ratings go down. Then it becomes a credibility problem for them: Are schools doing a good job?”

In the last few years, as a wave of anti-testing sentiment crested, many states dropped the tests they’d been using to measure mastery of their standards, and chose to use college-admission tests instead. Psychometricians have warned that the SAT and ACT were designed to measure the likelihood of success in college, not whether students learned the skills outlined in their states’ academic standards.

Wrestling With Scores

Twelve states now use the SAT or ACT as their official measures of achievement, and they’re wrestling with the same cut-score-setting process as Illinois, since federal law requires states to report three or more levels of achievement on their tests.

Four states that use the SAT decided to tackle the problem together. Delaware, Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire brought educators together to figure out the SAT score that best reflected their academic expectations, as stated in the Common Core State Standards .

They settled on using the College Board’s own college-readiness benchmarks as their proficiency cutoffs, even though the panels of educators recommended higher cut points.

Michigan uses the SAT college-ready benchmarks to connote proficiency on its test, according to a spokesman for the state department of education.

States that use the ACT have made varied choices about where to set their proficiency cutoff scores. ACT, which is scored on a 1-36 point scale, considers students college-ready with scores of 18 in English, 22 in math and reading, and 23 in science. In Louisiana , students are considered proficient if their composite score on the ACT is 21 or higher.

Nebraska took a different approach, setting the ACT score cutoff at 18 in both math and English, four points lower than ACT’s math college-readiness score, and two points below it in English. State education department spokesman David Jesperson said that in setting those scores, Nebraska took into account the scores its state universities use for admission.

In Wisconsin, proficiency means an ACT score of 22 in math, the same level as ACT’s college-ready cutoff, and 20 English, a blend of ACT’s benchmarks for the reading and English portions of its exam. Wyoming set its proficiency scores at one point below ACT’s college-ready benchmark in math and one point above it English/language arts, according to the ACT.

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Guest Essay

How the SAT Changed My Life

By Emi Nietfeld

Ms. Nietfeld is the author of the memoir “Acceptance.”

This month, the University of Texas, Austin, joined the wave of selective schools reversing Covid-era test-optional admissions policies, once again requiring applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores.

Many colleges have embraced the test-optional rule under the assumption that it bolsters equity and diversity, since higher scores are correlated with privilege. But it turns out that these policies harmed the teenagers they were supposed to help. Many low-income and minority applicants withheld scores that could have gotten them in, wrongly assuming that their scores were too low, according to an analysis by Dartmouth. More top universities are sure to join the reversal. This is a good thing.

I was one of the disadvantaged youths who are often failed by test-optional policies, striving to get into college while in foster care and homeless. We hear a lot about the efforts of these elite schools to attract diverse student bodies and about debates around the best way to assemble a class. What these conversations overlook is the hope these tests offer students who are in difficult situations.

For many of us, standardized tests provided our one shot to prove our potential, despite the obstacles in our lives or the untidy pasts we had. We found solace in the objectivity of a hard number and a process that — unlike many things in our lives — we could control. I will always feel tenderness toward the Scantron sheets that unlocked higher education and a better life.

Growing up, I fantasized about escaping the chaos of my family for the peace of a grassy quad. Both my parents had mental health issues. My adolescence was its own mess. Over two years I took a dozen psychiatric drugs while attending four different high school programs. At 14, I was sent to a locked facility where my education consisted of work sheets and reading aloud in an on-site classroom. In a life skills class, we learned how to get our G.E.D.s. My college dreams began to seem like delusions.

Then one afternoon a staff member handed me a library copy of “Barron’s Guide to the ACT .” I leafed through the onionskin pages and felt a thunderclap of possibility. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without permission, let alone take Advanced Placement Latin or play water polo or do something else that would impress elite colleges. But I could teach myself the years of math I’d missed while switching schools and improve my life in this one specific way.

After nine months in the institution, I entered foster care. I started my sophomore year at yet another high school, only to have my foster parents shuffle my course load at midyear, when they decided Advanced Placement classes were bad for me. In part because of academic instability like this, only 3 percent to 4 percent of former foster youth get a four-year college degree.

Later I bounced between friends’ sofas and the back seat of my rusty Corolla, using my new-to-me SAT prep book as a pillow. I had no idea when I’d next shower, but I could crack open practice problems and dip into a meditative trance. For those moments, everything was still, the terror of my daily life softened by the fantasy that my efforts might land me in a dorm room of my own, with endless hot water and an extra-long twin bed.

Standardized tests allowed me to look forward, even as every other part of college applications focused on the past. The song and dance of personal statements required me to demonstrate all the obstacles I’d overcome while I was still in the middle of them. When shilling my trauma left me gutted and raw, researching answer elimination strategies was a balm. I could focus on equations and readings, like the scholar I wanted to be, rather than the desperate teenager that I was.

Test-optional policies would have confounded me, but in the 2009-10 admissions cycle, I had to submit my scores; my fellow hopefuls and I were all in this together, slogging through multiple-choice questions until our backs ached and our eyes crossed.

The hope these exams instilled in me wasn’t abstract: It manifested in hundreds of glossy brochures. After I took the PSAT in my junior year, universities that had received my score flooded me with letters urging me to apply. For once, I felt wanted. These marketing materials informed me that the top universities offered generous financial aid that would allow me to attend free. I set my sights higher, despite my guidance counselor’s lack of faith.

When I took the actual SAT, I was ashamed of my score. Had submitting it been optional, I most likely wouldn’t have done it, because I suspected my score was lower than the prep-school applicants I was up against (exactly what Dartmouth found in the analysis that led it to reinstate testing requirements). When you grow up the way I did, it’s difficult to believe that you are ever good enough.

When I got into Harvard, it felt like a miracle splitting my life into a before and after. My exam preparation paid off on campus — it was the only reason I knew geometry or grammar — and it motivated me to tackle new, difficult topics. I majored in computer science, having never written a line of code. Though a career as a software engineer seemed far-fetched, I used my SAT study strategies to prepare for technical interviews (in which you’re given one or more problems to solve) that landed me the stable, lucrative Google job that catapulted me out of financial insecurity.

I’m not the only one who feels affection for these tests. At Harvard, I met other students who saw these exams as the one door they could unlock that opened into a new future. I was lucky that the tests offered me hope all along, that I could cling to the promise that one day I could bubble in a test form and find myself transported into a better life — the one I lead today.

Emi Nietfeld is the author of the memoir “ Acceptance .” Previously, she was a software engineer at Google and Facebook.

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Top Comments

· 5h 9m ago

11:56 - 2nd

30-0 UConn run = insane. Good luck, Purdue, Illinois just got embarrassed.

I genuinely think Illinois could win this game. Would need a few things to bounce in their favor, but they're certainly capable.

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College Sports | NCAA basketball tournament Saturday and Sunday TV schedule: Tip times, networks and announcers for each Elite 8 game

Eight teams are left and four spots in the national semifinals, otherwise known as the Final Four, are up for grabs.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament has its last chance for some March Madness on Saturday and Sunday with four more games as the regional finals are held in Boston, Los Angeles, Dallas and Detroit as the field is trimmed from eight to four.

The tournament takes most of the next week off. The national semifinals are April 6 and the finals are April 8 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

Two players with local connections are still in the field. Clemson’s Joe Girard III played for Glens Falls, New York, in the Cedar Beach Basketball Showcase in Allentown in 2018. He played at Syracuse for four seasons before transferring to Clemson.

Duke features Ryan Young, who played for Ray Barbosa at Bethlehem Catholic and led the Golden Hawks to the state semifinals in 2018 before losing a thriller to Imhotep Charter. Young redshirted in 2018-19 and then spent three seasons at Northwestern before transferring to Duke and is in his second season with the Blue Devils.

Here’s the TV schedule:

Saturday’s games

Time, Network, Site, Game, Announcers

6:09 p.m., TBS/truTV, Boston, Boston, (3) Illinois vs. (1) UConn

Kevin Harlan / Dan Bonner / Stan Van Gundy / Andy Katz

8:49 p.m., TBS/truTV, Los Angeles, (6) Clemson vs. (4) Alabama

Brian Anderson / Jim Jackson / Allie LaForce

Sunday’s games

2:20 p.m., cbs, detroit, (2) tennessee vs. (1) purdue.

Andrew Catalon / Steve Lappas // Evan Washburn

5:05 p.m., CBS, Dallas, (11) NC State vs. (4) Duke

Ian Eagle / Bill Raftery / Grant Hill / Tracy Wolfson

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College Sports | NCAA basketball tournament Saturday and Sunday TV schedule: Tip times, networks and announcers for each game

Illinois vs UConn Elite 8 picks, predictions, odds: Who wins March Madness game?

No. 3 seed Illinois and No. 1 seed UConn play Saturday, March 30 in an NCAA Tournament Elite Eight game in Boston, Massachusetts.

The East Region game is scheduled for 3:09 p.m. PT and can be seen on TBS/truTV ( stream with Sling TV ).

Who will win the March Madness game and advance to the Final Four? Check out these NCAA Tournament regional final picks and predictions for the men's college basketball matchup.

UConn is an 8.5-point favorite in the game in March Madness odds provided by BetMGM Sportsbook . The Huskies are -375 on the moneyline. The Fighting Illini are +300. The over/under for the game is set at 154.5 points.

Illinois defeated No. 2 seed Iowa State in the Sweet 16, 72-69. UConn beat No. 5 seed San Diego State , 82-52.

FOLLOW THE MADNESS: NCAA basketball bracket, scores, schedules, teams and more.

Elite Eight picks, predictions: Illinois vs UConn | Clemson vs Alabama | Tennessee vs Purdue | NC State vs Duke | Elite Eight schedule | Elite Eight game odds | Elite Eight win probabilities | National championship odds

Peoria Journal Star : UConn 82, Illinois 75

Wes Huett writes: "Illinois beat Iowa State in a contrast of styles, able to have its playmakers execute down the stretch. UConn will be a much larger task for the Illini, who must hope to keep it close enough to give players like Terrence Shannon a chance to be playmakers in big spots. But the Huskies are not the Cyclones, and we think they have enough to outrun the Illini."

College Football News : UConn 83, Illinois 75

Pete Fiutak writes: "Illinois has the exact right makeup pull this off. Again, size isn’t a problem. It won’t be outrebounded by the Huskies - at least, it won’t be outrebounded by enough to matter. The offense isn’t a problem. There’s more than enough pop to score in any way possible, just like UConn does. What’s missing is the consistent defense. Illinois will apply pressure, but it doesn’t come up with takeaways, and there’s a problem when the shots don’t drop. The team is 0-3 when it doesn’t get to 40% from the floor, and it’s 5-6 when it doesn’t get to 44%. UConn won’t stuff the Illinois attack, but it’ll come up with the big late stops the other side won’t."

Who is still in March Madness? See remaining NCAA Tournament teams

KenPom.com : UConn 82, Illinois 76

The site predicts that the Huskies will defeat the Fighting Illini in the East Region final on Saturday.

Action Network : UConn 78.3, Illinois 72.8

The site gives the edge to Connecticut in the Elite Eight game in Boston, Massachusetts.

ESPN : UConn has a 76.1% chance to beat Illinois in March Madness

The site gives the Fighting Illini a 23.9% shot at defeating the Huskies in the Elite Eight March Madness NCAA Tournament game.

STREAM THE GAME: Watch Illinois vs. UConn live with Sling TV

BEST BETS:  These are the best Arizona college basketball betting sites

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