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Is a 1150 SAT Score Good?

You just received your test results and are looking at an 1150 SAT score. The immediate question is: Is that good enough to get into college?

The short answer is yes, an 1150 is a strong, above-average score. It places you squarely in the 68th percentile nationally. This means you scored higher than over two-thirds (68%) of all students who took the exam. It is a highly competitive score that comfortably clears the admissions requirements for a massive majority of state universities and mid-tier private colleges across the country.

However, if you are aiming for elite tier-one universities, highly selective flagship campuses, or substantial merit-based scholarships, an 1150 may still fall slightly below the target threshold. Because an 1150 shows you already have a firm grasp of the fundamentals, you are in the perfect position to achieve a massive score jump on a retake by focusing purely on test strategy.

What Percentile is an 1150 SAT Score?

To understand exactly how an 1150 holds up against the rest of the testing pool, we need to look at the percentile breakdown for 2026. Keep in mind that an 1150 can be achieved with different combinations of Math and Reading & Writing (R&W) scores.

It's worth remembering that a "percentile" simply describes where you rank against everyone else who sat the exam that year. A 68th-percentile result means you are officially in the top third of a very large, mixed group. For a deeper breakdown of how every composite score maps to a percentile, see our full SAT Score Percentiles 2026 chart.

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1150 SAT Score Standings

Here is how your 1150 compares to other students and how many colleges you are currently competitive for across the United States:

Searchable Table: Which Schools Could You Get Into With an 1150?

Rather than guessing, it helps to see exactly where an 1150 lands you against a wide spread of real universities — from open-admission campuses where you're comfortably above the middle range, to reach schools where an 1150 sits below the typical admitted student. The table below loads dynamically based on your score.

Note: Ranges are approximate 25th–75th percentile figures and change year to year. Always confirm current figures on a school's own Common Data Set or admissions page before making a decision.

1150 SAT Score and Your GPA: The Combined Admissions Picture

Admissions officers rarely look at a test score in isolation. An 1150 SAT paired with a 3.8 unweighted GPA tells a very different story than an 1150 paired with a 2.9 GPA — the first suggests a strong student who simply tests below their classroom performance, while the second suggests a student who is struggling across the board. If you're unsure how your grades translate on a standard scale, our free GPA calculator and GPA conversion chart can help you see exactly where you stand.

Can Superscoring Help an 1150?

Many colleges "superscore" the SAT, meaning they take your highest Math score and your highest R&W score across multiple test dates and combine them into a new, higher composite — even if neither individual sitting reached that total. This matters enormously for an 1150 scorer. If you scored 580 Math and 570 R&W on one date, and then focus your entire second round of prep purely on R&W, a jump to 620 R&W would superscore to a 1200 without your Math score needing to move at all.

1150 SAT to ACT Equivalent

If a school you're applying to accepts the ACT instead of (or alongside) the SAT, an 1150 SAT composite typically lines up with an ACT composite score of 23. Some students find they naturally test better on the ACT's science and grammar-heavy format than on the SAT's format. Our full ACT score chart breaks down composite scores by percentile so you can compare directly.

3 Steps to Jump from an 1150 to a 1350+

1. Master Standard English Conventions: Roughly half of the Reading & Writing section is purely grammar. Memorizing the rules for semicolons, em-dashes, and subject-verb agreement is the fastest way to add 50-80 points to your R&W score.
2. Exploit the Desmos Calculator: The digital SAT has a built-in Desmos graphing calculator. If you learn to graph the equations in Desmos and look for the intersections, you can bypass complex math and solve difficult problems in seconds.
3. Invest in Expert Strategy: If you want to jump into the 1300s to unlock scholarships, self-studying often isn't enough. Programs like Prep Expert specialize in taking average scores (like an 1150) and utilizing specific test-taking strategies to guarantee a 200-point score improvement. A 200-point jump turns an 1150 into a 1350—moving you from the 68th percentile up to the 90th percentile.

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