It’s one of two standardized college admissions tests in the US.
The SAT was originally adapted from and Army IQ test and administered as a college admissions test for the first time in 1926. However, it didn’t really catch on until 1933, when the president of Harvard started using the test to assess scholarship applicants because he believed it was an effective measurement of intellectual potential. This view of the SAT helped propel it’s popularity by the 1940s, it had become the standard test for all college applicants and was administered to over 300,000 people across the country