(MONEY Magazine) – If your child takes the SAT this fall and again next spring, his or her score on the second test will almost certainly leap, by as much as 100 points. The ^ reason: Starting in April, the College Board will use a new scoring system -- the first change since the present scale of 200 to 800 points was adopted in 1941. Back then, the 10,000 test takers were mostly well-to-do graduates of private high schools, and their average performance was assigned a score of 500. As the numbers of would-be collegians soared 18,000% to the past school year's 1.8 million, however, the demographics of the test takers changed enormously. One result of this new situation was that average scores declined steadily, to today's 424 on the verbal portion of the SAT and 478 on the math section. To reflect the change, the College Board decided to recalibrate the scoring system so that 500 will again be average. Consequently, most verbal scores will rise 80 points or so, and math scores will go up around 20 points. (On both sections, 200 will remain the lowest possible score and 800 the highest.) Students who take the SAT this fall will be graded under the old system. Then in the spring, colleges and high school guidance offices will use equivalency tables to adjust the scores according to the new scale. Since nearly everybody' s score will move up, however, the boost will be purely cosmetic. -- L.L.