UVA SAT Scores: 2026 Stats to Know Before You Apply
Applying to UVA without understanding its full admissions picture is a bit like checking the weather by glancing at one hour of a five-day forecast. You get a number, but not the context that makes it useful. The common assumption among high school students applying to college is that if their score clears UVA's published range at all, it must be good enough to be competitive. See our AI college counselor for how this works in practice.
Most students spend an hour bouncing between rankings pages, college data aggregators, and forum threads, and still walk away unsure whether their SAT score makes them a realistic candidate or a long shot. UVA's acceptance rate sits at approximately 17%, according to the University of Virginia (UVA) Office of Undergraduate Admission. That figure is not a technicality; it is the competitive frame inside which every SAT score, GPA, and course rigor decision gets evaluated.

Only a small fraction of applicants earns admission, which means clearing a published score floor is nowhere near the same thing as being competitive. The failure point is usually this: a student Googles "UVA average SAT," finds a single composite number, compares it to their own score, and calls it a day. That approach ignores where within the admitted pool that number sits.
UVA publishes its data as a middle 50% range, not a single average, because the distribution is what actually signals competitiveness. A score at the 25th percentile of admitted students and a score at the 75th percentile both technically "clear the range," but they carry very different admissions weight. According to the official admissions statistics page, the middle 50% SAT range reflects a genuinely selective pool, not a soft floor. Where you land within the range, and how your section scores interact, shapes the holistic read of your application in ways a single average cannot capture. This article treats UVA's published data as a self-assessment framework, not a scoreboard.
17% UVA's highly competitive acceptance rate
Key takeaways
- UVA's middle 50% SAT range for Fall 2025 is 1410–1540; clearing the floor doesn't make you competitive — it makes you eligible.
- Two students with the same composite can look completely different to an admissions reader: section-level scores for Math and EBRW each carry their own window, and falling outside either one matters.
- Test-optional at UVA is not a free pass; withholding a score that sits inside the middle 50% can quietly work against you, because readers notice what's missing.
- GPA and SAT aren't two separate boxes UVA checks independently; they're read as a combined signal, and a weakness in one amplifies scrutiny of the other.
- Most students build their college list by comparing their stats to published ranges in isolation; that's the wrong unit of analysis, because fit is about your full profile against the admitted pool, not one number against a cutoff.
- Kollegio.ai's College Finder lets you enter your actual stats, activities, and interests so the AI can match your complete profile against schools like UVA, turning a page of numbers into a list that reflects where you genuinely belong.
UVA SAT Score Range and Averages — The Middle 50% Numbers That Actually Matter
Pull up UVA's admissions page right now and you will see a number that looks clean and reassuring: a middle 50% SAT composite range of 1410 to 1540 for the Fall 2025 entering class, sourced directly from UVA's Office of Admission. The common assumption is that if a score clears UVA's published range at all, it must be good enough to be competitive. That bracket is the most honest signal in the data. The problem is that most students never use it correctly.

What UVA's Middle 50% SAT Range Actually Means
The middle 50% range means exactly what it says: half of all admitted students for Fall 2025 scored between 1410 and 1540. One quarter scored below 1410. One quarter scored above 1540.
According to UVA's Office of Admission statistics, the 25th percentile sits at 1410 and the 75th percentile sits at 1540. That is not a range to "clear." It is a distribution that tells you where you stand relative to your actual competition.
Think of it as a stadium with four sections. If your score is 1410, you are sitting in the cheapest seats. If your score is 1540, you are near the front.
Both students technically got in, but they arrived with very different levels of academic cushion, and admissions readers knew exactly which section each one was sitting in. This is where real anxiety sets in for most applicants. Students who score a 1450 often wrestle with whether that number is genuinely competitive or just barely inside the bracket.
Students targeting UVA's School of Engineering, which draws a stronger quantitative applicant pool, feel this uncertainty even more sharply with scores like a 1430. The bracket does not answer that question on its own. Where your score falls within the range, and what surrounds it in the rest of your application, is what determines whether you are a credible candidate or a long shot.
Why the UVA Average SAT Score Is Misleading
The average composite SAT score for admitted UVA students is not published as a single official figure and varies by source and year. Any average you do find is mathematically real and practically useless. Averages collapse a wide distribution into a single point that describes almost no one in the admitted class with any precision.
A student who scores 1420 and a student who scores 1560 both pull that average toward 1490. But their competitive positions are completely different. The 1420 student sits just above the 25th percentile floor, meaning the large majority of admitted peers scored higher.
The 1560 student sits above the 75th percentile ceiling, meaning their score is stronger than at least 75% of the admitted class. The average hides that entire gap. Knowing which side of the distribution you occupy changes the strategy you need to build everywhere else.
A student near the bottom of the range cannot afford a generic essay or a thin activities list; those elements carry more weight precisely because the SAT is working against them. This is the kind of profile-level clarity that Kollegio's College Finder surfaces at the start of the onboarding process, before any college recommendations are generated, so the rest of the application plan is calibrated to actual competitive position rather than a false sense of safety from the average.
The 25th Percentile Floor
Scoring at or just above 1410 does not make a student competitive. It places them in the bottom quarter of the admitted class, and admissions readers can see that immediately. Historically, applicants have felt the weight of this cutoff acutely: in earlier admissions cycles, being even slightly below UVA's published range effectively removed a student from serious consideration, and that dynamic has not softened meaningfully as the applicant pool has grown more selective.
There is a separate layer of pressure that catches many students off guard: UVA's policy of encouraging applicants to submit all scores creates genuine anxiety about whether withholding a lower test score will hurt rather than help. The honest answer is that context matters enormously. A lower score can be explained and offset, but only if the rest of the file gives readers something compelling to hold onto.
That is precisely where essays and the activities record become the primary levers for students whose SAT lands near or below the floor. Kollegio's AI Essay Planner and essay review tools exist specifically to help applicants produce essays that sound authentic and stand out to readers, not polished in a way that feels coached, but genuine in a way that creates a distinct impression. Paired with Activity Feedback, students near the bottom of the SAT range can build a file that gives admissions readers a clear, memorable reason to admit them despite the score.
Getting that work done early, before the application window closes, is how students improve their actual odds, not by chasing a number that may already be set. For students still deciding where to apply, Kollegio's College Finder and personalized college recommendations match a student's full profile and goals to a realistic list, so that a 1430 SAT score is evaluated in the context of every school on the list, not just the reach where it is weakest.
A student near the bottom of the range cannot afford a generic essay or a thin activities list, those elements carry more weight precisely because the SAT is working against them.
SAT Section Score Breakdown for UVA — Math vs. EBRW, and Why Both Windows Matter
Two identical SAT composites are not equal applications. A student with 780 Math and 680 EBRW carries the same composite as a student with 740 Math and 720 EBRW, but only one of those profiles clears both of UVA's section-level windows cleanly. Understanding where each window sits, and what falling outside it actually signals, is the self-assessment most applicants skip entirely.

UVA's EBRW Window: 700 to 76
UVA's admitted-student data shows a middle 50% EBRW range of roughly 700 to 760, published on UVA's official admissions statistics page. A score below 700 does not just sit at the edge of the range; it falls outside the window for the majority of admitted students entirely. Admissions readers see section scores individually, not just the composite total.
A STEM-track applicant who scores 680 EBRW alongside a strong Math score may look balanced on paper, but that reading and writing score sits below UVA's 25th percentile for that section, a visible gap in a holistic review. This is also where score-reporting anxiety tends to surface. Students who have sat with a 1310 composite, a score already below UVA's 25th percentile, often feel paralyzed by UVA's expectation to "submit all scores," unsure whether that language represents a strict requirement or a soft recommendation.
The practical consequence is real: submitting a score anchored by a sub-700 EBRW can make the section imbalance more visible to readers, not less. Building an honest, section-level picture of where a score lands relative to UVA's published windows is the starting point for making that decision clearly. Kollegio's College Finder captures exactly this kind of granular academic detail at the very start of the onboarding process, before any recommendations are generated, so students and families are working from an accurate baseline, not a composite number that flatters more than it informs.
UVA's Math Window: 710 to 780
The Math middle 50% range runs from roughly 710 to 780, per the same UVA admissions statistics page. The floor is the more consequential number for most applicants. Engineering hopefuls face heightened scrutiny on Math performance specifically, and a score at or below 700 raises a flag that no strong EBRW result fully offsets. The ceiling matters less than people assume; moving from 760 to 800 adds marginal value compared to the risk of sitting below 710.
Engineering vs. Arts and Sciences — Different Risk Profiles
Section imbalance risk is not uniform across UVA's schools. Applicants to the School of Engineering and Applied Science face a Math floor that functions more like a hard threshold than a soft benchmark. A Math score below 710 in a pool where competitors routinely score 760 and above is a meaningful disadvantage.
College of Arts and Sciences applicants carry more flexibility, but a sub-700 EBRW score still creates friction. These distinctions matter most when building a college list, and getting them wrong is one of the most common mistakes families make. Matching a student's academic profile, section by section, not just by composite, to the right schools, schools where their scores and interests genuinely fit, is precisely the kind of expertise Kollegio's College Finder and AI College Recommender are built around.
A balanced, realistic college list accounts for a student's actual numbers, their intended program, and the family's financial picture together. Kollegio's Scholarship Finder and financial aid tools layer alongside that list-building process so cost and fit are evaluated at the same time, not sequentially. When section scores create risk at a reach school, that analysis should be visible from the start, not discovered mid-application.
Related Reading
- Boston University SAT Scores
- UF SAT Scores
- UCLA SAT Scores
- Johns Hopkins SAT Scores
- Clemson SAT Scores
- Northwestern SAT Scores
- Villanova SAT Scores
- Georgetown SAT Scores
- Brown SAT Scores
- UPenn SAT Scores
- Boston College SAT Scores
- Vanderbilt SAT Scores
- Purdue SAT Scores
ACT Scores at UVA, SAT vs. ACT Preference, and UVA's Superscoring Policy
The ACT composite score at UVA tells a precise story, and the SAT tells the same one in a different language. Before you decide which test to submit, or whether to retest, you need both translations in front of you so the choice is based on real data rather than a friend's advice or a hunch. One of the clearest patterns among students Kollegio works with: anxiety about whether a single composite number accurately represents their academic strength, and whether UVA will see what they actually bring to the table.

UVA ACT Middle 50% (32–35) and Its SAT Equivalent
Students are frequently confused about whether cross-test superscoring — combining ACT and SAT scores — is a valid or recognized practice in college admissions.
UVA's middle 50% ACT composite range for the admitted class is 32 to 35, per UVA's official admissions statistics page. Across the market, ACT scores in the low-to-mid 30s map closely to SAT scores in UVA's middle 50% range of 1410 to 1540, which confirms the parity is real, not just a policy statement. A mid-range ACT composite translates to a score squarely inside the competitive SAT band.
A struggle students we work with consistently face: an overall ACT composite of, say, 29 that masks a 32 in STEM sections, and real anxiety about whether UVA sees only the composite or the full section picture. UVA's holistic review means section scores are visible in your file, but the composite is the primary headline number. That mismatch between composite and section strength is exactly why understanding where your score sits inside the middle 50%, not just above or below a single cutoff, matters so much when you're building a balanced, realistic college list that matches your actual academic profile.
Kollegio's College Finder captures this nuance at the very start of the onboarding process, before recommendations are generated, so your college list reflects your real range rather than a single data point.
UVA Does Not Prefer the SAT Over the ACT — Submit Whichever Score Is Stronger
What most teams working in college admissions consistently report is that the university explicitly treats both tests as equals and encourages applicants to submit whichever score best reflects their performance. The submission data backs it up: approximately 67% of enrolled students submitted SAT scores and 33% submitted ACT scores, per UVA admissions statistics. The SAT majority reflects test-taking volume nationally, not any institutional preference.
If your ACT composite is a 34 and your SAT composite is a 1450, submit the ACT without second-guessing it. Worth addressing directly: students we work with often feel anxious that a 34 raw ACT composite may not be competitive enough for a school like UVA, especially when they are holding a higher superscore. That anxiety is understandable but frequently misdirected.
A 34 composite sits inside UVA's middle 50% range. The goal is not to chase a perfect number; it is to build a college list where your test score is one well-matched data point among many, calibrated against your interests and your family's financial situation. Kollegio's College Finder and AI College Recommender are built to do exactly that: surface schools where your full profile is competitive, not just your headline composite.
UVA Superscores the SAT — What That Policy Actually Means for Your Composite
67% of enrolled students submitted SAT scores
UVA participates in score choice and superscores the SAT, meaning it takes your highest Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score and your highest Math score across all test dates and combines them into a single composite. The practical effect: every additional SAT sitting can only improve your composite. A student who scored 720 EBRW and 700 Math in March, then 690 EBRW and 760 Math in May, earns a superscored composite of 1480, better than either single sitting alone, and confirmed by UVA's published admissions statistics.
One misconception students frequently carry into this process: the idea that cross-test superscoring, combining your best ACT sitting with your best SAT sitting into a single hybrid score, is a recognized admissions practice. It is not. UVA superscores within each test separately; it does not blend ACT and SAT results into a single composite.
Understanding that boundary matters when you are deciding whether to retest, switch tests entirely, or simply choose your stronger score to submit. Kollegio's College Finder helps you map out exactly where each score lands relative to a school's published ranges, using data like UVA's admissions statistics, so your submission decision is grounded in your real numbers, not a misread of policy.
Related Reading
- Boston University SAT Scores
- UPenn SAT Scores
- UF SAT Scores
- UCLA SAT Scores
- Clemson SAT Scores
- Northwestern SAT Scores
- Villanova SAT Scores
- Georgetown SAT Scores
- Vanderbilt SAT Scores
- Boston College SAT Scores
- Purdue SAT Scores
- Johns Hopkins SAT Scores
- Brown SAT Scores
Is UVA Test-Optional? What Submitting (or Skipping) Your Score Actually Does to Your Application
Skipping your SAT score at UVA feels like the safe move when your number isn't strong. But safe and strategic are not the same thing, and the difference between those two words can quietly shape how an admissions reader interprets your entire file.

UVA Is Test-Optional — What That Actually Means
Yes, UVA is test-optional for the 2025–2026 admissions cycle, confirmed through UVA's Office of Undergraduate Admission. That means submitting SAT or ACT scores is not required. What it does not mean is that your choice carries no consequences.
Test-optional is a policy about requirements, not about impact. One thing worth naming directly: a lot of applicants, particularly out-of-state students, genuinely wonder whether UVA's test-optional policy is real or just nominal. The anxiety is understandable.
Policies vary across universities, some schools have already reversed course, and the university's own communications don't always make the answer easy to find. The short answer is that UVA's test-optional stance is confirmed and in effect for the current cycle. The longer answer is that confirmed does not mean consequence-free.
Test-Optional Is Not Test-Blind
Because UVA is test-optional but not test-blind, every score you choose to submit is fully visible to admissions readers. According to UVA's published admissions statistics, the 25th percentile SAT composite for admitted students is 1410. Submit a score below that threshold and you are not adding a neutral data point.
You are actively telling readers where you rank relative to the admitted pool, and that signal works against you. Strong coursework and grades absolutely matter. They simply cannot retroactively neutralize a below-range score once it is on the page. The strategic question is whether to put it there at all.
The 25th Percentile Rule — A Clear Decision Framework
The clearest decision rule available is this: if your score sits at or above 1410, submitting it is generally worth considering. Below that, withholding it is usually the stronger move, because your GPA, course rigor, and activities can carry the application without a score that anchors you to the bottom of the distribution. This is not a gut call.
It is a quartile-based calculation. At Kollegio, the College Finder captures your academic record, GPA, class rank, course load, and test scores at the very start of the onboarding process, before any college recommendations are generated. That sequencing matters: the Plan Applications feature uses your full profile to flag exactly this kind of decision point, so you are not discovering the 25th-percentile problem after you have already hit submit.
There is one important wrinkle. UVA's published admissions statistics reflect enrolled students who chose to submit scores, not the full applicant pool. High-achieving students who withheld scores have already self-selected out of that data set, which compresses the visible range upward. A score that clears the published floor is not competing against that floor; it is competing against the stronger, self-selected group of submitters the floor was drawn from.
Submission Rates and What They Signal
At selective universities, applicants who submit scores are admitted at higher rates than those who do not, but that pattern is driven by the fact that stronger applicants tend to submit. Submitting a below-range score does not replicate that advantage. It imports the disadvantage without the benefit.
If the test score question is resolved and you decide to withhold, the weight shifts entirely to your essays and activities. That is where Kollegio's AI Essay Planner and essay review feedback become load-bearing. When a score is off the table, the written components of your file have to do more work, and getting structured feedback on those essays before submission is no longer optional in any meaningful sense.
One practical trap worth knowing: if you submit your Common App to another school before deciding your UVA strategy, your test scores lock into the main application. You cannot suppress them on a per-school basis after that. Planning your submission sequence across schools, not just evaluating each school in isolation, is exactly the kind of detail the Plan Applications feature is built to surface before it becomes a problem you cannot undo.
What GPA Does UVA Expect — and How Your SAT Score and GPA Work Together
A 3.8 GPA and a 1400 SAT feel like two separate boxes to check. Hit both, and the thinking goes: you're in range. But UVA's admissions office doesn't read those numbers side by side as two independent passes. It reads them as one combined signal, and the critical synthesis here is that UVA's holistic review creates a compounding trap: because both numbers are evaluated in context rather than in isolation, a borderline SAT score does not get "covered" by a high raw GPA, and a high raw GPA does not offset a borderline SAT score; the combination must be strong, because neither number rescues the other.

UVA's Admitted GPA Band — What 3.8 to 4.2 Unweighted Actually Looks Like in Practice
The average unweighted GPA of admitted UVA students is roughly 3.9, with 84% of admitted students ranking in the top 10% of their high school class. A 3.9 unweighted lands right at the lower edge of the competitive band, not comfortably inside it. Many admitted students clear a 4.0 because of heavy AP and IB loads, not because they earned A-pluses in standard courses.
This is where real anxiety sets in, and it's well-founded. Students with an unweighted GPA near 3.4 face a steep climb at UVA even when their extracurriculars are strong, because the GPA floor is genuinely difficult to overcome with other application components alone. Students with a 4.0 unweighted GPA paired with a 1520 SAT often struggle to understand precisely where they stand, because UVA does not publish a simple cutoff.
That uncertainty isn't a perception problem; it reflects the genuine complexity of holistic review. At Kollegio, this is one of the first things the College Finder surfaces: before any recommendations are generated, it maps a student's academic profile against realistic admission bands so families understand whether UVA belongs on a reach, target, or likely list, not after months of effort, but at the very start of the process.
Why Course Rigor Rewrites the Value of Your GPA Number
UVA recalculates GPA using its own formula, and course rigor is baked directly into that recalculation. A 3.9 earned across AP and IB coursework recalculates very differently from a 3.9 earned in a mostly standard schedule. This is where students get caught off guard: a high raw GPA from a low-rigor transcript may already be discounted before an admissions officer even glances at the SAT score.
The GPA number on your transcript is the starting point, not the final word. Kollegio's College Finder and AI College Recommender account for this distinction directly. A student with a 3.9 across standard coursework receives a materially different college list than a student with the same raw GPA and six AP credits.
The goal, as UVA's admissions statistics make clear, is a balanced, realistic college list that matches a student's actual academic profile, not the profile they hope admissions officers will infer.
The Trade-Off Zone — When a Stronger GPA Can Offset a Lower SAT (and Vice Versa)
The honest answer is that the trade-off zone is narrower than most students hope. A student with a 1400 SAT, a 3.9 unweighted, and a rigorous course load sits in a genuinely uncertain position at UVA, not disqualified, but not safe either. According to UVA admissions statistics and third-party analysis of the same data, the middle 50% SAT range for admitted students starts at 1410, which means a score at that level places a student below the median admitted applicant even when the GPA is competitive.
The anxiety students feel around this trade-off is legitimate: there is no published formula that tells you how many GPA points compensate for a 50-point SAT deficit, or vice versa. What is knowable is that the further either number falls below the admitted median, the more every other application component, essay, activities, letters of recommendation, must carry additional weight. Kollegio's Activity Feedback tools are designed for exactly this scenario: helping students understand which parts of their application can realistically move the needle and which cannot, so families can make informed decisions rather than optimistic ones.
A student sitting at a 3.7 deserves clarity about what is and isn't recoverable, not false reassurance. That clarity starts with an honest profile assessment, which is why Kollegio's Student Profile Builder runs before any college recommendations are generated.
From UVA Stats to Your College List — How to Know If UVA Actually Fits Your Profile
Knowing UVA's score ranges, GPA benchmarks, and acceptance rates is genuinely useful work. But numbers sitting in a spreadsheet don't tell you whether you belong at UVA; they only tell you what the people who enrolled there looked like in aggregate. The gap between those two things is where most college lists go wrong, and it's exactly why students we work with at kollegio.ai arrive anxious, unsure whether a 3.667 unweighted GPA is genuinely competitive or just close enough to feel hopeful.

The Reach, Match, Safety Calculation UVA's Numbers Actually Support
UVA's acceptance rate is drawn from a record 82,118 applicants, according to Oriel Admissions. At that selectivity level, UVA is a reach for most applicants, including students with scores above the 75th percentile. The honest reach-match-safety framing treats UVA as a reach unless a student's full profile, score, GPA, course rigor, extracurriculars, and school context, sits consistently in the upper range of admitted students, not just inside the published window.
Building a balanced list around that reality is one of the hardest parts of the college process, and one of the clearest places where families go wrong by anchoring too heavily on a single school. Kollegio.ai's AI College Recommender and College Finder are designed specifically to help students build a balanced, realistic college list that matches their academic profile, interests, and family financial situation, not just a cluster of aspirational names around one target. When UVA sits in the reach tier, the match and safety tiers aren't backup options; they're the architecture of a real plan.
In-State vs. Out-of-State — How Your State of Residency Shifts the Competitive Bar
Virginia residents and out-of-state applicants are not competing on the same playing field. UVA's in-state acceptance rate runs meaningfully higher than its out-of-state rate — the most current breakdown is available at UVA's admissions statistics page —, which means a 1470 SAT reads differently depending on which pool a student enters. An out-of-state applicant with scores and grades that would place them comfortably as a match for an in-state student may still be operating squarely in reach territory.
That residency variable has to be factored into list-building from the start, not discovered after applications are submitted. There's a related and sharper version of this problem: students who planned their entire academic path around UVA's Guaranteed Admission Agreement (GAA) sometimes discover late in the process that a single early grade disqualifies them, a consequence of not having clear, upfront visibility into how the program's exact requirements work in practice. That kind of late-stage blindside is preventable when the planning starts with complete information rather than assumptions.
Kollegio.ai surfaces these program-specific considerations during the profile and list-building phase, so residency, program eligibility, and competitive positioning are all accounted for before a student commits to a strategy, not after the window has closed.
Related Reading
- Carnegie Mellon SAT Scores
- Tufts SAT Scores
- UC Berkeley SAT Scores
- UNC SAT Scores
- Auburn SAT Scores
- Columbia SAT Scores
- University of Michigan SAT Scores
- UConn SAT Scores
- Good ACT and SAT Scores
- Wake Forest SAT Scores
- NC State SAT Scores
- Ivy League SAT Scores
Next steps
If your SAT score clears UVA's published range but you still cannot tell whether you are genuinely competitive or just technically inside the bracket, the path forward starts with knowing exactly where you sit in the distribution, not just whether you cleared the floor.
The fact that UVA's published range is drawn from enrolled students, not the full applicant pool, means a score at the 25th percentile (1410) is competing against a self-selected submitter group that skews stronger than the range implies. That alone changes what "in range" actually means. Add to that the finding that section imbalance, a sub-700 EBRW or a Math score below 710, is visible to admissions readers independently of your composite, and the case for a granular, profile-level read becomes obvious. Generic chance calculators cannot close that gap. A complete profile assessment can.
Start with Kollegio's AI college counselor, which maps your scores, section results, GPA, course rigor, and school context against UVA's actual admitted distribution before generating any college list recommendations. From there, your reach, match, and safety tiers are built around your real competitive position, not the composite number on your score report.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good SAT score for UVA?
A score of 1540 or above puts you above the 75th percentile of admitted students, making it genuinely strong. A score between 1410 and 1540 places you within the middle 50% range, but where you fall inside that band matters: a 1540 carries far more admissions weight than a 1410, which sits at the bottom quarter of the admitted class.
Can I get into UVA with a low SAT score?
Scoring at or just above the 25th percentile floor of 1410 does not make you competitive on its own; it places you in the bottom quarter of the admitted class, and admissions readers see that immediately. Students near or below that floor need essays and an activities record strong enough to give readers a compelling reason to admit them despite the score.
What are UVA's ACT score ranges, and how do they compare to the SAT?
UVA's middle 50% ACT composite range for the admitted class is 32 to 35. That band maps closely to the SAT middle 50% range of 1410 to 1540, confirming the two tests are genuinely equivalent in UVA's review, not just equal in policy.
Does UVA prefer the SAT over the ACT?
No, UVA explicitly treats both tests as equals and encourages applicants to submit whichever score best reflects their performance. The fact that approximately 67% of enrolled students submitted SAT scores reflects national test-taking volume, not any institutional preference for the SAT.
Does UVA superscore the SAT?
Yes. UVA superscores the SAT by taking your highest EBRW score and your highest Math score across all test dates and combining them into a single composite. This means every additional SAT sitting can only improve your composite, never hurt it.

Author
Senan KhawajaSenan Khawaja is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kollegio, an AI-native college counseling and institutional recruiting platform serving roughly 250,000 students across 190 countries. A Stanford graduate, repeat founder, and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree with World Bank experience, Senan launched Kollegio to democratize elite college counseling—addressing the 400:1 student-to-counselor ratio in public schools. Under his leadership, Kollegio has secured 22+ institutional partners with a 100% renewal rate and backing from Reach Capital, JFF Ventures, and ECMC Group. He was also selected for OpenAI's inaugural ChatGPT Futures Class of 2026. Senan is based in New York City.



