<p>What's a "good score" on the ACT?</p>
<p>If someone can give me a conversion table that would be helpful.</p>
<p>Or more exactly, what a 30 on the ACT translates to the SAT</p>
<p>Google SAT ACT equivalence and you will find some links that may help you.</p>
<p>Every single college and university in the US that requires a standardized exam for admission will accept both the ACT and the SAT. Some will accept the ACT instead of SAT Subject exams. Some want the ACT with writing if you aren’t taking the SAT. There are also a whole lot of really good places that don’t require standardized tests for admission. Read all about that issue at [The</a> National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest](<a href=“http://www.fairtest.org%5DThe”>http://www.fairtest.org)</p>
<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/act-sat-concordance-tables.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board; </p>
<p>[ACT-SAT</a> Concordance](<a href=“http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/index.html]ACT-SAT”>http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/index.html) </p>
<p>Note that the list of colleges that don’t require the SAT on the Web lists mostly colleges that are open-enrollment colleges, that is colleges that don’t require high school grades or any other qualification besides willingness to pay the tuition.</p>
<p>Usually, most people consider 33+ on the ACT or 2200+ on the SAT to be excellent because those scores usually put you in the 99th percentile … if you get those scores, you shouldn’t be retaking the test unless you really bombed on one section.</p>
<p>Its interesting that the concordance tables don’t match up too well with 25%-75% spreads of SATs vs ACTs if one digs into stats on enrolled students from their Common Data Set or Factbooks. In looking at many school-by-school comparisons, I have found that an ACT score is roughly equivalent to SAT (/1600) + ~30 points. While not every school shows this 30 point disparity, most do in my experience, some more sizable than 30 points.</p>
<p>On face value, then an ACT composite score of 29, say, may be worth a bit more than the concordance value of 1300/1600, and more like a 1330. This would be good news for ACT submitters.</p>
<p>I am not sure why this disparity exists, but here are two theories: (1) the concordance data compare ONE SITTING of SAT to ONE Sitting of ACT at the individual level. As most schools supersciore the SAT, but not the ACT, then the ~30 points bridges that difference; (2) (cynical view)…as only SATs are counted in the USNews ranking, schools take more liberties with pulling in less outstanding students (i.e., recruits, legacies, etc) who submit ACTs…while the ACT ranges are reported, they are not used as heavily in characterizing a school’s academic prowess as the SATs.</p>
<p>Example: (data taken from US News electronic version)</p>
<p>Brown
reported ACT mid 50%: 28-33
SAT concordance to above: 1260-1460
reported SAT mid 50%: 1330-1530…70 points different on each end.</p>
<p>There is definitely more going on here…Brown is an extreme example, and many others show more modest differences, with the vast majority on the side of the concordance tables underpredicting ACT to SAT conversion.</p>
<p>^You do need to keep in mind that Brown is one of the more “holistic” schools of the elites. Test scores don’t account for that much, as long as you have a good one.</p>
<p>yes, but if one assumes the sample population size is big enough, and that Brown (& just about every other school I’ve looked at this way…dozens) applies the same holistic process to ACT submitters as SAT submitters, then the conversion between ACT and SAT at the school level should be valid…whereas, its significantly off of the published concordance tables.</p>
<p>That is, an ACT score may be better (perhaps taking it from the fringe of OK to the fringe of ‘good’) than one thinks if only going by the concordance tables.</p>
<p>The above concordance link includes a page that offers the “estimated relationship” between scores on the two tests. The concordant score for 28 is 1260, the related score is 1880.</p>
<p>According to ACT.org, “Concordant scores are defined as those having the same percentile rank with respect to the group of students used in the study. The tables are useful for determining the cutoff score on one test that results in approximately the same proportion of students selected by the other test (although not necessarily the same students).” </p>
<p>I can’t quickly locate the definition of an estimated relationship score. Does anyone know why these are different? It might help explain what you are seeing with regard to Brown admissions stats.</p>
<p>Oh, found more about the estimated relationship. It’s a direct formula:
"The SAT CR+M+W total score can be related to the ACT Composite using the following equation:</p>
<p>Estimated SAT CR+M score = (SAT CR+M+W score +15) / 1.5</p>
<p>Round this value to the nearest 10, and then use the concordance table to get the estimated ACT Composite score.</p>
<p>The ACT Composite can be related to the SAT CR+M+W scale by first converting the ACT Composite score to the SAT CR+M scale using the concordance table, and then using the following equation:</p>
<p>Estimated SAT CR+M+W score = (1.5 x SAT CR+M score) – 15</p>
<p>This number is rounded to the nearest 10." (from [ACT-SAT</a> Concordance: Understanding Estimated Relationship](<a href=“http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/estimating.html]ACT-SAT”>http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/estimating.html))</p>
<p>Does Brown use something like the formula or something like the percentile concordance to compare an ACT student applicant with an SAT student applicant?</p>