Hi,
I was just wondering… I’m going to be a senior and I took the old SAT with essay and got an 11/12 on it. I’m planning on taking the ACT September just to see if I can do better on it, but I’m wondering if I should take the ACT with or without essay. Would it be possible to not take the essay and just send in my old SAT with essay (because 11/12 is pretty good), or would you guys recommend taking the ACT with essay?
Thanks
First of all, check with your colleges of interest to see if they are even requiring the essay anymore. that info. should be available on their websites. You should also make sure that they are accepting the old SAT (most are).
Unless you think your SAT stinks and no college should see it then you are fine not worrying about the essay for the ACT. You can just submit both tests and the college will take the higher total/composite from one and the essay from the other. If you have any questions about that whatsoever you should contact your admissions counselor(s) just to make sure that makes sense.
Good luck to you!
Colleges that require writing state on their sites that they require either the SAT w/writing or the ACT w/writing. None of those as far as I know go on to say that if you submit SAT w/writing and an ACT w/o writing, that the college will use the ACT w/o writing to determine admission if it is a better score than the SAT. Since the college may well just ignore the test w/o writing entirely in that situation, you would be well advised to take the ACT w/writng unless you specifically ask all the writing-required colleges and get a definitive answer from each and every one of them that your ACT w/o writng will defintiely be used for admisison when you submit an SAT w/writing and the ACT score is better than the SAT.
Go ahead and take it with the essay. That way it’s part of the single test. Colleges aren’t looking at essay scores from EITHER test this year because of the scoring messes on both tests. All they’re looking at this year is the composite scores.
@drusa my advice was based on checking with six universities (three public and three private) on this issue. Three of these institutions changed their policy this year not to require the essay at all. The remaining three are fine with submitting an essay on one test only and would not be chucking the other test if higher just because it didn’t have an essay. Universities aren’t looking to eliminate talented applicants based on a technicality. As you say, OP should check, but the essay is really no big deal at best. It doesn’t carry the same weight as the other subsections. Most adcoms use it merely as a check on the application essay/personal statement to make sure the latter wasn’t written by someone else.
There is another issue that I didn’t mention earlier which is that ACT has had mega problems with it’s crappy (new) essay scoring system over the past year. It re-tooled for September but the whole system is still in a flux and OP may well find out the hard way that the kinks aren’t worked out yet. When you already have a top score, the only direction is down. Why risk it?