The rich and famous, they’re just like us (subject to the same standardized tests as us, that is). We’ve compiled a list of the SAT scores of several notable figures, gleaned from interviews, gossip columns, and plain old hearsay. Given the limitations of our sources, we would encourage anyone viewing these scores to take them with a grain of salt, just as you would any lurid speculations into the personal lives of celebrities! The scores listed below run the gamut of standardized test performance. 

A Breakdown of Celebrity SAT Scores

Note that Ivy Coach scaled each alleged score to the new 1600 point scale for the sake of consistency. 

Celebrity	Known For	Score	Alma Mater
Paul Allen	Microsoft Co-Founder	1600	Washington State University
Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook Founder	1600	Harvard University
Will Smith	Actor	Allegedly near-perfect	N/A
Ben Affleck	Actor	Allegedly near-perfect	Occidental College, University of Vermont
Bill Gates	Microsoft Co-Founder	1590	Harvard University
Ben Bernanke	Former Chair of the Federal Reserve	1590	Harvard University
Kesha	Singer	1500	N/A
Natalie Portman	Actor	1400s	Harvard University
Al Gore	Former Vice President	1355	Harvard University
Stephen King	Author	1300s	University of Maine
Jesse Eisenberg	Actor	1260	The New School
Courtney Cox	Actor	1150	Mount Vernon College
Scarlett Johansson	Actor	1080	N/A
Bill Clinton	Former President	1032	Georgetown University
Howard Stern	Media Personality	870	Boston University

Ivy Coach’s Breakdown of Celebrity SAT Scores

Is it really a surprise that Paul Allen or Mark Zuckerberg achieved perfect SAT scores? Probably not. In fact, highly successful entrepreneurs typically excel academically at their respective colleges (even if some go on to drop out!). It should come as even less of a surprise that many of the top scorers on this list kicked off their careers at Harvard University, which famously values academic high-achievers. For this same reason, Kesha’s score of 1500 garnered her a scholarship to Barnard College (although she never ended up matriculating, choosing instead to pursue her music career). Now, in the case of Will Smith and Ben Affleck, is there a chance they have inflated their alleged scores for the sake of increasing their entertainment industry mystique? It’s possible, but it is just as likely that their success as actors was a product of their strong intellectual chops.

As we move down the list, we find Natalie Portman’s respectable score somewhere in the 1400s which garnered her admission to Harvard (along with her impressive acting resume, of course), Jesse Eisenberg’s moderate 1260, which buoyed him into The New School (and eventually into playing the perfect-scoring Zuckerberg on film!), and Stephen King’s score in the 1300s, which was competitive enough to get him into the University of Maine.

What Explains the Success of the Low-Scorers?

Some may be scratching their heads at Bill Clinton’s paltry 1030, which was evidently not bad enough to cause him to be rejected from Georgetown. The truth is, when President Clinton was applying to college, the admissions game was not nearly as competitive as it is today.  A 1030 may have cut it for Georgetown applicants in the 1960s, but the idea is laughable for elite college applicants in 2024.

That’s why Ivy Coach offers SAT and ACT tutoring for ambitious high schoolers: high standardized test scores are absolutely essential for any application to a highly selective school to even be considered. The middle 50% of students in the most recently admitted cohort at Harvard, for example, scored between 1500 and 1580 on the SAT, and between 34 and 36 on the ACT. While some students managed to get in with scores below the 1500 threshold, these cases are few and far in between, and this goes for all highly selective universities. Of course, those who see the lights and glamor of Hollywood calling their name need not worry about their SAT scores, but the rest of us mere mortals must rely on higher education to usher us into successful futures!