The data in this report are Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) results and most recent scores for students scheduled to graduate from North Carolina schools in 1998 regardless of when they last took the test. Results represent the performance of public and nonpublic school students, including the state's charter schools and schools for the gifted. In 1998 North Carolina students made a mean gain of four points while the U.S. mean SAT score improved by one point. The North Carolina mean total SAT score for 1998 college-bound seniors was 982, and although North Carolina students continue to show improvements each year, they remain 35 points below the national mean. This is the smallest gap in 27 years. The gap is less for students in North Carolina public schools, and North Carolina students are closer to the rest of the country on the verbal portion of the SAT than on the mathematics section. Of all the racial and ethnic groups in North Carolina, only Hispanic students score higher than their national counterparts, but they are a very small portion of the total SAT scores from the state. In North Carolina, as in the entire United States, the higher the family's income, the higher the student's mean total SAT score. Additional information is provided about student course selection, college preparation, and study methodology. A data appendix contains nine tables of comparative data for North Carolina and the United States as a whole. (Contains 10 figures, 9 tables, and 2 references.) (SLD)