<p>
[quote]
Kids at my school don't take the SAT or PSAT. They've never even heard of SAT II's. Of course, my school is not the academically competitive type, but you get the point. ACT or bust!
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That's interesting. Are you from east, west or middle Tennessee? We live in middle Tennessee and my D's school encourages the PLAN, ACT, PSAT and SAT. More of the students at her school do take the ACT over the SAT, but many, like my D, take both.</p>
<p>"The ACT seems like the obvious choice to me because there is less testing, since there aren't SAT II's to take. "</p>
<p>Not true...from what I get, most colleges prefer SAT or ACT, and then 2 or 3 SAT IIs on top of either one of those.</p>
<p>im from the boston area and very few ppl here take the acts. everyone takes the sats. they only take acts if theyre IN ADDITION to sats, because theyve heard that theyre easier or something. haha i am one of these people..i'm taking both. 2 chances are better than 1, no?</p>
<p>In Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh (my school of choice) accepts EITHER the SAT or ACT. So you can suck at the SAT's, but do great at the ACTs. Nice eh?</p>
<p>This calls for a bump.</p>
<p>ElenorR:</p>
<p>the UC's will indeed accept the ACT+W in lieu of the SAT. They just use a conversion table. That being said, not many Cali kids take the ACT.</p>
<p>Some colleges, like Pomona, will accept the ACT in lieu of SATI and SATII's.</p>
<p>And another bump.</p>
<p>Yeah, like Poog said the ACT is not that popular in Maryland. But I don't think that people take it if they bomb the SAT. I didn't bomb the SAT, but I want to see if I can get a higher score relative to the SAT.</p>
<p>So basically on the East Coast the ACT is more like an afterthought? Weird, because so many people here don;t even bother taking the SAT at all, just ACT. And they get into Harvard and such</p>
<p>The only top school that does not accept the ACT is Cal Tech. In fact, the East Coast schools could care less which you take and, on several tours of Ivies, emphasized that students who took the ACT don't have to take SAT II's at most (Harvard still required 3 SAT II's in addition, but this was the exception). Also, far fewer students achieve perfect on the ACT than on the ACT (only 24 students nationally got a 36 vs. >100 1600's on the SAT).</p>
<p>A 36 is harder for another reason. Most schools allow you to take the best SAT subscores from multiple sittings. So, many who got a 1600 may have done so through muliple sittings. You can not do this with the ACT.</p>
<p>In 2004 ony 224 students got a 36 composite out of almost 1.2M ACT test takers.</p>