<p>But don't gnash your teeth too much over this. No scholarship money. Too late to help in college apps.</p>
<p>^^amb3r, thanks for the comments--and yes, I figured QMP was lucky to get a 790. </p>
<p>^^mammall, no gnashing here, wouldn't have advised QMP to do it differently (i.e., take the ACT after the SAT I). Enough is enough when it comes to the standardized tests, from my point of view.</p>
<p>I have a question perhaps some of you statistics-oriented people might be able to answer for me.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how many of the 1550-1600 top SAT scorers ALSO took the ACT? In other words, if you look at the list of how many kids scored 34-36 on the ACT, how many other kids are out there taking only SATs, scoring 1550-1600 who might have been expected to be in the same ACT cluster IF they had taken the ACT?</p>
<p>How is that for an obscure goodness can you believe we care kind of a question? Hehehehehe. But I'm still asking it...</p>
<p>And does anyone study for the ACT the way that kids prep for the SATs?</p>
<p>And how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?</p>
<p>No teeth-gnashing here, either. Just an interesting discussion. </p>
<p>Alu: I don't have your answer, but I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone who got a top score on the SAT would go on to sit for the ACT as well. Same goes for a kid who gets a 36 on the ACT. No earthly reason to sit for the SAT I (well, except to confirm for NMF).</p>
<p>And yes, there are plenty of expensive one-on-one ACT tutors in ACT country. Not sure about the group classes like Princeton Review. But we do know tons of kids who have private tutors.</p>
<p>At our school the kids just routinely take both exams. We are in California, kids have gone to a private Catholic prep school.</p>
<p>I don't know what the custom is in the rest of the country. </p>
<p>I have a vague and unsubstantiated impression that prepping, whether in classes or with tutors or individually, is 90% focused on the SATs. But again, I really don't know. So I'm happy to hear any and all thinking on the issue.</p>
<p>"At our school the kids just routinely take both exams."</p>
<p>Wow, that's interesting. Here, kids tend to take the ACT first and the ACT only, unless they're unhappy with their scores.</p>
<p>I don't believe that ACT, Inc. and CollegeBoard are affiliated in any way, so I doubt that they could share combined ACT/SAT score information on any particular students--that would likely be a privacy violation. So we can't know for the exact same students what their scores were on both tests (at least not statistically).</p>
<p>I think it's reasonable to assume that the >1million students who take both tests every year are approximately the same in "smartness", so you could establish the concordance or correlation of scores just by knowing the detailed distribution in percentages of both tests. wjb gave a link for recent ACT data; I haven't found similar recent SAT data showing distribution, although it may exist online. The data I gave a link to in #139 is from 1994-1996 so I worry that the correlation it shows is no longer valid.</p>
<p>Around here, kids rarely study for the SAT. There aren't prep classes. I've heard of a few kids who have taken the ACT because they weren't happy with their SAT performance, but think the number taking the ACT is very small.</p>
<p>I don't know how much overlap there is, but I would fall within the overlap. nms and the possibility of adding another good score to the list are probably the two biggest reasons for taking one after getting a perfect on another, and they were compelling enough for me. whatever overlap there is probably grows every year as the popularity of the sat spreads to act country and vice versa. i live in NYC, where most people take the sat only, but some are starting to take the act on the side.</p>
<p>ayyverily, that concordance is THE concordance. There is research available to read on collegeboard supporting the concordance and its methodology. For example, the concordance IS based on kids who took both tests.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Typically, PS has chosen roughly 40 (20 males, 20 females) from each state as candidates. PS' method has apparently been to first include all 1600 scorers in a state, then to name as many ACT scorers as needed to get to the magic number of 40 (with ties often making the number go a few over). In Illinois and other states this year (and presumably other years) that meant that PS got to the magic number of 40 well before exhausting the list of ACT 36s, and SAT 1600s arguably got an unfair advantage. </p>
<p>The argument that SAT candidates had an unfair advantage over ACT candidates must have resonated, because two weeks after the original list went up, my son received notice that he was in the candidate pool, and so were were two other students we know who scored less-than-perfect 36s.
[/quote]
:mad: What a bunch of incompetent buffoons. Jeebus. What a bunch of maroons. How hard could that sort have been? What ? Ten minutes a state? They couldn't pour ^%$ out of a boot. I think KoKo the mountain gorilla could have done a better job. Fire them all.</p>
<p>alu, I don't know of any child in D's district that did anything but self-study on either test, but I've never even heard of an ACT review class from PR or Kaplan or similar around here although I think Sylvan had ACT tutoring available.</p>
<p>curm: Again, I have to caution that that report is hearsay. But given the circumstances of PS's abrupt, late addition to the list of 300 kids -- all of them, as far as I know, ACT takers -- (and this is NOT hearsay, PS attributed its delay in notifying late candidates to a "processing error") it is more than plausible.</p>
<p>curm: How can data for 100,000 students from 1994-1996 still apply to today's students taking these tests? That is possible only if they are intentionally curved to maintain that concordance. Otherwise, it seems to me that the tests could easily have trended one way or the other over the past 10+ years--one getting harder and the other easier, or vice versa.</p>
<p>"What a bunch of incompetent buffoons"</p>
<p>Your tax dollars at work.</p>
<p>I'm not the collegeboard. Ask them. They are the ones saying its valid. Not me. I'm just reporting. I believe the research is ongoing and if it "got off" they'd be the first to correct it. They are afterall - collegeboard.</p>
<p>yay, here's some research from the collegeboard site. <a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/concordance_between_s_10502.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/concordance_between_s_10502.pdf</a></p>
<p>I found it useful.</p>
<p>OK so I am asking the world's dweebiest question here. I'm actually not looking for what SAT score does the ACT score of 34-36 represent. I've seen the chart. I am wondering about absolute numbers. Imagine a Venn diagram. If there are x kids in the US who score over 34 on the ACT and x kids who score over 1550 on the SAT, then what is the total number of individual kids in the two circles? There will be, I assume kids who are in one circle but not in the other, and some kids who are in both.</p>
<p>BTW, x for the ACT appears to be for 2007 314+2,471+5,420=8,205, unless I am reading the chart incorrectly. y for the SATs I can't find the cumulative scores....but if you assume that the cumulative is something like the individual section scores it'll be around 16,000 kids?</p>
<p>I don't think those figures are available. My guess is the number of overlaps is small. I know my kid, who aced the SAT, wasn't about to spend time on the ACT.</p>
<p>Alu, something is interesting. Let's take 36's thru 34's.
07-314-2471-5420 1.3m
06-216-1806-4249 1.2m
05-193-1617-3729 1.18m
04-224-1619-3590 1.17m
03-195-1378-3288 1.17m</p>
<p>See anything out of whack? ;)</p>