Here's the fact this whole app is built around: there is no official SAT-to-UK-grade or ACT-to-UK-grade conversion table. UCAS runs a real, published points system called the Tariff, and it explicitly includes American AP exam scores and IB scores for US applicants -- but the SAT and ACT don't appear anywhere in it. Ireland's CAO points scale doesn't reference either test at all. Any number you've seen online converting your SAT score into a UCAS Tariff figure is somebody's estimate, not an official rate.
How the UK's own points system actually works
UCAS's Tariff table assigns a fixed point value to specific qualifications so universities can compare applicants on one scale: an A-level grade A is worth 48 points, A* is 56, B is 40, and so on down to E at 16, and a typical competitive offer like "A*AA" adds up to 152 points. For a US applicant, the Tariff table also assigns points directly to AP exam scores and to IB results -- an AP score of 5 earns real, tabulated Tariff points, the same way an A-level grade does. What the table does not contain, anywhere, is a row for SAT or ACT. Universities that publish a Tariff-points requirement for a course are stating it in terms of A-levels, IB, or AP -- not in terms a US test score maps onto automatically.
How Ireland's CAO scale works, and why it doesn't apply to most US applicants anyway
Ireland's CAO points scale runs on the same logic in its own currency: each Leaving Certificate grade is worth a fixed number of points (a H1 is worth 100), a student's best six subjects count toward a maximum of 625, and there's a 25-point bonus for a strong Higher Level Maths result. Like the UK Tariff, this scale has no SAT/ACT row -- it's built entirely around the Leaving Certificate. But this matters less than it sounds for most US applicants: as the CAO guide covers, US students typically aren't ranked on the CAO points scale at all -- most Irish universities route American applicants through a separate direct-entry admissions process with its own published SAT/ACT figures, evaluated outside the points system entirely.
So what number actually applies to you?
The only reliable figure for a US applicant is a published SAT or ACT minimum, stated directly by the specific course you're applying to, for US applicants specifically -- not a Tariff-points estimate, and not a general "UK equivalent" your search results turn up. That's exactly the one path this app's calculator is built to use: every course in the dataset that shows a chances result does so because that course's own admissions page states a real SAT or ACT figure for US applicants, cited with a source link on every result card. When a course only publishes a native Tariff-points or CAO-points requirement and no direct US-test figure, the calculator says so honestly -- "not enough data" -- rather than backing into a number from an unofficial conversion. That's a deliberate choice, not a gap we haven't gotten to yet: no defensibly citable SAT/ACT-to-Tariff conversion exists to build one on. The same honesty gap exists on the other end of your degree, too -- see what UK and Ireland degree classifications actually mean for why there's no official First/2:1-to-GPA conversion either.
It's not just about converting your score -- some schools don't ask for one at all
The conversion problem above assumes a school wants an SAT or ACT number in the first place. A genuinely large number of UK universities don't -- see our breakdown of which UK schools require a test score, which don't, and which fall in between for the actual school-by-school split, based on the same source-linked course data as the calculator. And even once you know a school does want a number, a second question sits underneath it that most applicants never check: whether that threshold is read against your single best test sitting or a superscore combining your best sections across sittings -- the real policy genuinely differs from one university to the next.
What this means for you
- Ignore any tool that hands you a single converted UK-grade-equivalent number from your SAT or ACT score alone -- no official table backs that conversion, whatever confidence the tool displays.
- Look up the specific course's own admissions page, not a general "UK universities SAT requirements" list -- entry figures are set per course, and only the institution's own published number for US applicants is real.
- If a course only publishes Tariff points or CAO points and no direct SAT/ACT figure, treat that as genuinely unscoreable from your test score alone, not as a course to skip -- it may still be a real option, you just can't compare it the way this app compares the courses that do publish a direct figure.
- A published AP score threshold is a real, tabulated UK figure in a way an SAT score isn't -- if you're taking APs alongside the SAT/ACT, that's the number with an actual conversion table behind it. See how many AP exams UK universities actually ask for for the real, course-by-course counts.
- The IB Diploma gets the same real Tariff treatment as AP, at the component level -- but that's still not the number most universities actually state their IB offer in. See what IB score you actually need for a UK university for the real, course-by-course figures.