The College Board, a nonprofit corporation that owns the SAT college-admission tests, and NCS Pearson, a test-scoring company from Eden Prairie, will pay $2.85 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over the underscoring of thousands of SAT tests nationwide.

The settlement was approved Friday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

Students who got erroneous low scores can get at least $275.

They can get more if they believe the scoring errors caused them major hardships such as losing athletic scholarships or not being admitted to the college of their choice.

Forms are being mailed to the students so they can submit their claims.

The settlement amount represents not only payments to the students but also attorneys' fees. Attorneys agreed to cap those fees at $900,000, according to St. Paul attorney Joe Snodgrass.

Represented in the suit were 4,411 students whose scores on October 2005 SAT tests were mistakenly scored too low because of moisture problems that caused some of the answer sheets to expand.

NCS Pearson officials have said none of the underscored tests was from Minnesota.

Many of the students whose tests were scored too low are from Eastern Seaboard states, said Edna Johnson, spokeswoman for the New York City-based College Board.

While SAT tests are more prevalent among college-bound students on the West and East coasts, ACT college admission tests are more prevalent in Minnesota and other Midwestern states.

Johnson said the College Board directed NCS Pearson, which scans the tests, to devise more safeguards against scoring mistakes.

Those include scanning all answer sheets twice on different days, using different scanning machines and improving scanner maintenance.

Most of the scoring errors were minor, she said.

The estimated 600 students whose SATs were scored too high were not included in the class-action lawsuit.

Norman Draper • 612-673-4547

Norman Draper • ndraper@startribune.com