What is a standardised (SAS) score and how do you work it out?
How the Standardised Age Score works, the population we compare against, and how to read it as a percentile and stanine.
A Standardised Age Score, or SAS, compares a candidate's performance against a large sample of applicants of the same age, rather than simply counting how many questions they answered correctly. A score of 100 is the average.
What makes Quest's standardisation distinctive is the population we compare against. Quest Admissions scores are standardised against our large sample of applicants who have sat entrance exams to independent schools. Our questions have been standardised with a sample of around 30,000 students, and this data is verified at least twice a year, so every candidate's responses contribute to the accuracy and adaptivity of our questions over time. Because of this, an average score of 100 in a Quest Admissions exam represents the average for a candidate applying to an independent school in the UK, not the average across the whole population.
It can help to read a SAS alongside its percentile and stanine. The percentile shows the proportion of candidates scoring at or below that level, and the stanine places the score on a simple 1 to 9 band.
| SAS | Percentile | Stanine |
|---|---|---|
| 127 to 142 | 96 to 100 | 9 |
| 119 to 126 | 90 to 95 | 8 |
| 112 to 118 | 77 to 89 | 7 |
| 104 to 111 | 60 to 76 | 6 |
| 97 to 103 | 40 to 59 | 5 |
| 89 to 96 | 23 to 39 | 4 |
| 82 to 88 | 11 to 22 | 3 |
| 74 to 81 | 4 to 10 | 2 |
| 58 to 73 | 0 to 3 | 1 |