Starting Thursday, high school juniors across New York will sit for the PSAT/NMSQT in their own classrooms, on whatever day their school picks between October 1 and October 30. Two days before that window opens, College Board posted its state report on the class of 2026, the students who went through the same process a year earlier.

According to College Board's 2026 New York SAT Suite of Assessments Annual Report, 127,180 students in New York's class of 2026 took the SAT at some point in high school. They posted a mean score of 1053, with 529 in Reading and Writing and 524 in Math. College Board reports a participation rate of 63 percent for the state.

New York's average test taker cleared CUNY's English readiness line comfortably and sat just under its Math line, in a year when fewer than half of the state's takers met both of College Board's benchmarks. The rest of this guide explains what each of those numbers means for a student deciding whether, when and how seriously to test.

The Statewide Number

The report covers students who chose or were scheduled to take the SAT, not every graduate. Among those 127,180 takers, 46 percent met both of College Board's college and career readiness benchmarks and 31 percent met neither. Sixty-seven percent cleared the Reading and Writing benchmark, while 48 percent cleared the Math benchmark.

The class of 2025 offers the closest comparison. College Board's 2025 New York report counted 127,054 takers with a median of 1045, split between 527 in Reading and Writing and 518 in Math, and 44 percent meeting both benchmarks. The pool of students held almost perfectly steady, while the mean rose eight points, six of them in Math.

Nationally, the College Board announcement released Tuesday (Sept 29) put the national mean for the class of 2026 at 1045, a 16-point increase over the previous cohort. Forty-two percent of takers nationwide met both benchmarks. More than 1.95 million students in the class took the test, a 2.5 percent decrease from the class of 2025, and SAT School Day accounted for 65 percent of them.

Priscilla Rodriguez, senior vice president of College Readiness Assessments at College Board, tied the release to the test's centennial. "As the SAT marks its 100th year, we continue to focus on ensuring students have access to the many opportunities the SAT and PSAT-related assessments provide, including scholarships," she said.

New York finished eight points above the national mean and four percentage points above the national share meeting both benchmarks, while its one-year gain was half the size of the national one.

Where the Gap Opens

College Board sorts takers by the location of their high school. 69,543 New York students at schools it classifies as city schools, 55 percent of all takers, averaged 983, and 33 percent met both benchmarks. The 39,283 students at suburban schools averaged 1138, and the 11,377 students at town and rural schools averaged 1126, with 62 percent of each group meeting both benchmarks.

The city label describes a school's setting rather than a single district. New York has urban districts from Buffalo and Rochester to Yonkers as well as the five boroughs, so the figure is not a New York City number.

Parents' education traces an even steadier line. Takers whose parents did not finish high school averaged 950, and those whose parents hold a high school diploma averaged 1001. The averages climb through 1043 for an associate degree and 1119 for a bachelor's degree to 1193 where a parent holds a graduate degree. At the top of the scale, 9 percent of the state's takers scored between 1400 and 1600.

The CUNY Line at 530

For many New York students, the most useful comparison is not with other states but with the thresholds CUNY uses to decide whether a new student is ready for credit-bearing coursework. According to the CUNY proficiency requirements published by Baruch College, a student can demonstrate CUNY math proficiency with an SAT Math score of 530 or higher or an Algebra I Regents score of 70 or higher. English proficiency takes an SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score of 480 or an English Regents score of 75.

Set against those lines, the state's class of 2026 averaged 529 in Reading and Writing, well past the 480 English mark, and 524 in Math, six points short of 530. That gap is small enough that a single section can decide which side of it a student falls on.

Test scores are not the only route across those lines. CUNY also uses a Proficiency Index, which Baruch describes as a formula that "combines overall high school grade point average with SAT and Regents scores." The formula "places more weight on high school grades than test scores, but higher test scores can help offset lower grades and vice versa." A student with strong grades and a Regents score above the cutoff may never need the SAT to prove readiness, while a strong section score can make up ground for weaker grades.

John Jay College's admissions FAQ states that "CUNY has a test-optional admissions policy for Fall 2023 through Spring 2027." Students who skip the scores, it adds, "will not be disadvantaged in the admissions process." Current seniors applying for fall 2027 should confirm the policy for their entering term directly with each CUNY campus, since the published window ends the semester before they would enroll. At SUNY, trustees voted in April 2023 to let state-operated campuses continue suspending the SAT and ACT requirement, which leaves the decision to each campus.

What the PSAT Window Opens

The College Board schedule lists the fall PSAT/NMSQT window as October 1 through 30, 2026, with schools choosing their own date, and adds a Saturday, October 17 option offered for 2026 only. The PSAT/NMSQT is the qualifying test for National Merit Scholarship recognition, and for juniors it is also the first score report that breaks out the same two sections the SAT tests.

A junior whose PSAT Math section lands below 530 has a full year before applications go out in fall 2027, time for the Algebra I Regents, coursework or a spring SAT. A senior in the same position this fall has fewer choices, which is why the Regents score and the grade point average matter as much as a retest.

Reading Your Own Score Against the State

The practical move for a student holding a score report is to look at the two section scores separately and set them against the 480 and 530 lines, rather than fixating on the total. A 1060 made of a 560 in Reading and Writing and a 500 in Math tells a CUNY-bound student something very different from a 1060 split evenly.

Families weighing where to apply can pair that score with the other numbers that decide what college costs and what it pays. The 2027-28 FAFSA opens on October 1, the same day as the PSAT window, and New York's universal FAFSA rule now applies to every senior. Our guide to the $30,793 federal earnings test for college programs covers the program-level outcomes that sit on the other side of the admissions decision.

Across New York, 127,180 students in the class of 2026 took the SAT, and 31 percent of them met neither readiness benchmark. The PSAT window for the class of 2028 opens Thursday.