The College Board, the organization that develops and administers the SAT, announced that average composite scores on the math and critical-reading sections once again fell to an all-time low, dropping 4 points since last year when scores dropped a historic seven points.

This year’s average score in critical reading was 502 (1-point decline lower than last year). The average scores in mathematics and writing declined 3 points each compared to a year ago, bringing the scores to 515 and 494, respectively.

College Board officials cite the increase in then number of minority students taking the test as the reason for the drop in scores.  A record 1.5 million test-takers from the 2007 high school graduating class took the SAT.  Thirty-nine percent of them were minorities.

Read the full press release.

The Princeton Review is hosting National Testing Day on April 28, 2007. On this day, Students may take free SAT, ACT and Princeton Review Assessment tests (to determine your test prep needs).

Locate a test center in your area.

States such as New York, Minnesota, Mississippi, Delaware, Michigan and Colorado offer low-income students financial aid to cover exam fees for Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalareate (IB) tests.

International Baccalaureate exams cost $54 and AP exams cost $83. While this seems like a small amount of money, consider that most students will take more than one of these exams, one for each subject area.