SATs are - to UK eyes - an unnecesarily complicated test sat by people trying to get into college in the USA. There's a verbal and a math test (SAT I) and subject-based SATs (SAT II) in which multiple choice questions get added, subtracted, divided, rounded up and down and thoroughlypercolated to get to your score. The *average* score for college-bound students is a shade over 500. It seems the perfect score is 800 - but the scores have been 'recentered' in the last 7 years so that's a matter of controversy. All in all very confusing. Trying to clarify: http://www.howstuffworks.com/sat.htm
and the site of the College Board that sets the SATs: http://www.collegeboard.com/testing
Actually you are both sorta wrong, the top score is 1600 and most students score fall somewhere between 1200-1400, 1000 is considered pretty bad and won't help the student get into a good university. And contrary what mikewith claims, the whole system is really no more confusing than any other examination system.