My daughter is junior and has taken ACT with score of 34. Does she need to take SAT too for college admission like Yale/ Columbia. Do colleges give preference to students who have taken both ACT and SAT vs those who have taken just the ACT?
Congrats! There is no bias for ACT vs. SAT and you don’t need to take both. So, if she is happy with that score, she could be done. (That was the case for one of my kids and it made her last year-and-a-half of high school much more laid-back than it would have been otherwise.)
A 34 is a good ACT score, but does leave room for improvement if she is targeting elite universities like Yale and Columbia, She may do better on the SAT or, for schools that superscore, bringing up scores on specific sub-tests of the ACT on a second go-round could also provide a lift. But it’s really not necessary by any means.
However SAT subject tests are either required or recommended by many selective schools. It varies from school to school and also on which college she is applying to within a university.
And, if her PSAT has qualified for NMSF, she will have to take the SAT to qualify for NMF.
Colleges do not have a preference and do not favor one test over another, and you do not need to take the SAT if you already have a high ACT (and vice versa). (The last college of any rank that was left which had a preference was California State University, San Luis Obispo, which ended its preference for ACT last year.) The only advantage to taking and submitting both is that you might score higher on one test than the other, in which case the college will use the higher test score to determine admission.