"Is a 1400 SAT good?" is the wrong question. The honest answer — the one the data forces — is: good for which school?
We looked at the reported admissions data for 644 U.S. universities that publish a middle-50% SAT range, pulled from Common Data Set and IPEDS filings. The pattern that emerges is more useful than any single "good score" cutoff, because the same score behaves completely differently depending on where you send it.
The same 1400 is a reach and a safety at the same time
Here is the finding that should reframe how you read your score. Among schools whose 75th-percentile admitted SAT lands in the 1400–1499 band — meaning a 1400-ish score is right in their admitted range — the acceptance rate ranges from about 17% to 95%.
Same score band. A nearly 6x difference in your odds. A few real examples from the data, all with a 75th-percentile SAT in the low-to-mid 1400s:
- Denison University — admit rate ~16.9%
- University of Miami — ~18.5%
- College of the Holy Cross — ~21.1%
- Skidmore College — ~22.9%
- University of Colorado Boulder — ~83.3%
- University of Arizona — ~85.7%
- Wheaton College — ~90.0%
- University of the Pacific — ~94.9%
Your 1400 didn't change. The school did. A score that makes you a strong candidate at Arizona makes you an average-to-below-average applicant at Denison — and the acceptance rates reflect exactly that.
What the score bands actually look like
Grouping the 644 schools by their 75th-percentile admitted SAT shows a clean relationship between score level and selectivity:
| 75th-percentile admitted SAT | Number of schools | Average acceptance rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1500–1600 | 78 | ~20% |
| 1400–1499 | 71 | ~50% |
| 1300–1399 | 111 | ~70% |
| 1200–1299 | 304 | ~80% |
| 1000–1199 | 75 | ~80% |
| Under 1000 | 5 | ~50% |
Two things stand out.
First, the top is brutal but not monolithic. Even among the 78 most score-selective schools (75th percentile of 1500+), the acceptance rate ranges from under 4% to above 60%. A 1550 does not "get you in" anywhere on its own — it makes you eligible to be considered at schools that then reject most eligible applicants.
Second, the middle is enormous. Over 300 schools have a 75th-percentile SAT in the 1200s, with average acceptance rates around 80%. For most students, a competitive, affordable, strong-outcome list lives here — not in the 20 names everyone fixates on.
Why a single "good score" number misleads you
A 1400 is roughly the 94th percentile of all SAT takers. By any normal standard, that is excellent. But "percentile among all test-takers" is not the comparison that decides admissions. The comparison that matters is your score against the admitted students at each specific school — and that comparison changes school by school.
This is why a national cutoff like "1400 is a good score" quietly leads students astray. It is true and useless at the same time. The useful version is always relative:
- At a school whose admitted 75th percentile is 1350, your 1400 is a genuine strength.
- At a school whose admitted 75th percentile is 1550, your 1400 sits below the middle — it is not disqualifying, but it is not doing the work you think it is.
How to actually use your score
The data points to a simple method for building a list:
- Stop asking whether your score is "good." Ask which schools your score is above the middle, at the middle, and below the middle of.
- Map each school to reach / match / safety using its own admitted range, not its reputation. A 1400 at a 1200-range school is a safety; the same 1400 at a 1550-range school is a reach. The reputation gap and the data gap often disagree.
- Weight your list toward where your score is at or above the middle. Those are the schools where the rest of your application — essays, activities, recommendations — has room to push you over the line, rather than working uphill against the numbers.
A score is not good or bad in isolation. It is a position relative to a specific admitted class. Once you see it that way, "is a 1400 good?" dissolves into a much more answerable question: which of these 644 schools is a 1400 good for?
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See exactly where your score lands
PrepToDone reads admitted SAT, GPA, and acceptance-rate data from hundreds of U.S. universities and maps your specific score to reach, match, or safety for every school — using the same federal and Common Data Set filings behind this article. Your profile strength score is free.