Methodology — How RawToScale Calculates Scores

Principles

Exam formats and section weights come from the official College Board and ACT pages, checked on November 15, 2026.
Where an official number exists (ACT conversion tables, ACT/SAT concordance, College Board practice-test conversion), we use it directly.
Where it does not (AP cutoffs), we say so and show an estimate with the number of sources.
We never present an estimate as official.

AP composite cutoffs

College Board does not publish the raw-score cutoffs for AP scores, and they change slightly every year. For each subject we collected public estimates from Fiveable, Test Ninjas and Dewey Smart, converted them to a 0–100 composite, and used the median. Where no source estimated the 2 cutoff, we set it at 68% of the 3 cutoff. Subjects with a single source (AP Seminar, AP African American Studies, AP Physics C: E&M) are the least certain.

Subject	5	4	3	2	Sources
APUSH	78	60	45	34	2
AP World	75	62	48	34	3
AP Euro	75	62	48	34	3
AP Gov	80	69	56	41	3
AP Comp Gov	76	64	50	36	2
AP Human Geo	70	59	49	40	3
AP Psych	75	63	53	43	3
AP Macro	81	63	54	42	3
AP Micro	82	67	54	42	3
AP AAS	82	65	46	31	1
AP Lang	77	66	53	36	2
AP Lit	76	66	52	36	2
AP Seminar	72	60	48	33	1
AP Bio	78	62	45	24	3
AP Chem	72	58	42	28	3
AP Physics 1	71	55	41	25	3
AP Physics 2	78	65	49	22	2
Physics C: Mech	58	44	35	25	3
Physics C: E&M	80	67	48	33	1
APES	73	59	51	38	2
AP Calc AB	63	50	38	32	3
AP Calc BC	61	50	39	32	2
AP Precalc	67	54	42	31	3
AP Stats	69	55	43	38	3
AP CSA	78	59	46	37	3
AP CSP	85	73	58	44	3

AP composite

Each section's raw points ÷ section maximum × official section weight. Within a section, free-response questions are weighted by their rubric points, e.g. AP Biology's two 9-point long FRQs carry more than its four 4-point short FRQs.

SAT and PSAT

The digital SAT is adaptive, so no fixed public raw-to-scaled table exists. We use College Board's official Practice Test #8 conversion table (66/54 questions), rescale your 54/44 counts proportionally, and show the low–high range from that table. PSAT values are capped at 760 per section.

ACT

Raw-to-scale conversions use ACT's official 2025 National Online Practice Test scoring key. The composite is the average of English, Math and Reading rounded to the nearest whole number; STEM is the average of Math and Science.

Conversions, GPA and National Merit

ACT↔SAT uses the official 2018 concordance. Percentage→GPA uses College Board's BigFuture chart. National Merit cutoffs are compiled by Compass Education Group and cross-checked with two other publishers, because NMSC does not post a public table.

Testing

Every calculator is covered by automated tests: maximum and zero inputs, out-of-range and empty inputs, rounding rules, boundary cutoffs and hand-checked examples.

Corrections

Spotted something out of date? Tell us — we review every report.

How We Calculate Scores