As many of you know the SAT is currently being completely revamped by the College Board. My daughter’s school is pushing for her to take the ACT, but I’m thinking she should take both. Is that too much to handle? I also heard that the exam a student decides to take is somewhat of a regional bias. The West Coast prefer the SAT…What are your thoughts?
It depends on your daughter’s strengths. You might believe she will do better on the ACT and then SAT is her strength. Try both…
Has she taken the PSAT or PLAN? These may give you an indication on which test she will perform better. If not, I would have her take both, then concentrate her test prep on the test with the higher score for a retake.
Take BOTH. You never know which one the student will do better on.
No, it’s not too much to handle. Many, many kids these days are taking BOTH…and taking them 2-3 times
My D1 took both. She needs SAT for National Merit while the state mandates ACT. Basically most students at her school take both.
I wish my kids had taken both.
Take both. My son scored better on the ACT and will have taken both twice.
By the way, my state is switching to mandate SAT next year. So I told my D2 in 10th grade to prepare for ACT for now while waiting for more new SAT prep material.
Take both. ACT is supposed to be more of a time crunch while SAT is (was) more a of a logic test. Different students can do better on one over the other.
Never hurts to take both, get a feel for each style. Most likely she will end up preferring one over the other and you can focus on boosting that one higher.
It depends on the kid and the level or selectivity of college that kid is aiming for Amir if kid is aiming for merit money.
If colleges will be higher ranked, kid is motivated and high scoring, or want merit at lower ranked schools, then take both. If not, then take act only.
Of course, Take the sat before it changes to the new format
Take both. My first child did a lot better on the ACT, and the second child did much better on the SAT. The first self-studied. The second worked with a test tutor. The strategy of the tutoring service was to have them take a practice test of each, then target the tutoring to the one they did better on.
An advantage of the ACT is that no subject tests are recommended/required by most colleges. My DD only took the SAT and while her scores were good, she is struggling to get high SAT subject test scores. I wish she had tried the ACT w/ Writing which might have been high enough for her not to worry about re-taking the subject tests. Live and learn. Fortunately, she has a few great colleges that don’t require subject tests so she will be fine.
Princeton Review offers a free hybrid test, to enable you to see which test makes the most sense. Take a look at their website.
And if she has an idea of which schools she’s considering, take a look at their websites to see whether they have a preference.
A couple observations about the two tests: 1) Colleges are only required to report the total composite score of the ACT, but both CR & M on the SAT 2) While math comprises 50% of the SAT score (most are not interested in the writing score), it is only 25% of the ACT composite. For these reasons I have advised students who were much stronger reading/writing students, as opposed to math, to focus on the ACT. Worked with both of my kids who looking at conversion tables scored approximately 60 SAT points (CR + M) higher on the ACT.
D1 took the SAT, after 4 hours got distracted and started enjoying reading an interesting passage and ran out of time. She wanted to be done junior year and had SAT IIs lined up for the May and June sitting, so she took the ACT June of Senior year and nailed it.
D2 took the SAT twice and eventually exceeded the target sub scores she set for herself of 750 M, 700 CR, and 650 W when superscored. She didn’t see the point of taking the ACT so she didn’t bother.
^ I agree that it should be a goal to finish SAT1/SAT2/ACT by the end of junior year. Indeed, I told my D to finish ACT/SAT by March and leave April to prepare for AP then SAT2 after AP.
I’d certainly recommend trying each of them at least once. My elder son took SAT twice (knocking the CR out of the park on second try), and the ACT once. He was mostly applying to theater programs where his scores were well within, if not above, the accepted range. My younger son tried both tests twice, and had similar results with similar increases, in terms of the composite scores, but he performed better on some portions of SAT and some of ACT.
My daughter took the ACT April of Junior year thinking she would take the SAT in June. She did well in the ACT and decided to use her June sitting for subject tests. So, I think it depends on how well she does and what schools she is targeting.
While the ACT is more prominent in the Midwest, colleges don’t have a preference as far as I know.