Joe is applying to university which states that the middle 50% of their students have combined SAT score between 1530 and 1850. He would feel confident if his score is in the top 25%, but Joe took the ACT test instead. How high does his ACT need to be to make it into the top 25% of equivalent SAT scores? For college-bound seniors, the average combined SAT score is about 1500 and the standard deviation is about 250 points. For the same group, the ACT average is 20.8 with a standard deviation of 4.8.