<p>The GC’s at my school aren’t exactly noted for their extreme helpfuless and professionality. Haha.</p>
<p>God, another ACT / SAT debate. Seriously we should just make a post with links to the nine million threads already about this and sticky it so I don’t have to keep reading redundant posts.</p>
<p>If test taking like varsity sports, the SAT would be football and the ACT would be water polo.</p>
<p>^^ water polo is more popular than football in some areas of the world. again it depends on where you live</p>
<p>I didn’t even bother to take the SAT. as said previously, here in the midwest no one takes the SAT</p>
<p>West Coast here–3 kids all took ACT and SAT. All three did better on ACT. I think the science portion of the ACT is hard for a lot of kids and that may scare them off as it can lower their score significantly. We have found that unless your a science major, the colleges cared more about the English, Math and Writing sections. The counselors at our school haven’t really pushed the ACT but I think many of the public colleges are starting to prefer it to the SAT. In fact, the ACT was listed first under admissions scores but that may have been because D did better on it than the SAT.</p>
<p>Coureur, not in the midwest.</p>
<p>If test taking is like varsity sports, maybe the SAT is like soccer and the ACT like gymnastics all-around.</p>
<p>^^ perhaps the ACT is like track (where speed is of the essence)…</p>
<p>When I said it was unpopular I was referring to the diction of the first post. I suppose I should have put quotes around it to emphasize that I didn’t agree with the wording.</p>
<p>I am perfectly aware of people who live outside my bubble and I’ve met people that don’t really know what the SAT is. I’m also aware of those statistics but even though many college-bound seniors took the test, the test isn’t as universally accepted at colleges as the SAT is - that was my point.</p>
<p>
I like that analogy since most important aspects of a person have nothing to do with their sports skill. Like-wise, the most important parts of a student are not their test scores. And no, I didn’t do poorly on either test - I just think neither measures people’s ability to have innovative thinking - I don’t care if you can learn other people’s ideas - can you critically develop some of your own (which usually is just independently coming to the same conclusions as other people, but it’s the way you figured it out/learned it that’s important)?</p>
<p>1) The ACT is different than the SAT, not harder/easier</p>
<p>2) The ACT is more/less popular in different geographic locations</p>
<p>3) You cannot qualify as a National Merit Semifinalist with the ACT</p>
<p>IMO, I think SAT is more popular cuz its promoted by PSAT and National Merit Scholarship program. i dont think act has such a program with that kind of incentives. but ultimately, it comes down to the money
if u set fee waivers aside, sat takers r usually richer cuz sat costs more to take than act</p>
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</p>
<p>But that’s an incorrect point, dshinka. Did you see the link in post #5? The whole point is that EVERY four-year-college in the US (that requires some kind of standardized testing) accepts the ACT. </p>
<p>Look, it’s just different regionally. I moved from an East Coast state in which everyone took the SAT and nobody took the ACT to a Midwestern state in which the opposite was true and in which nobody took the SAT. I myself took just the SAT and wouldn’t even consider ACT since I was stuck in that old just-the-midwesterners-take-the-ACT-mentality and I was applying to schools on the East Coast. But that’s ancient history. These days, the raw numbers of students taking the two tests are similar, the ACT is accepted everywhere, so I’m not sure why you’re saying that the ACT is less accepted.</p>
<p>Misconceptions debugged:
- The ACT is not necessarily easier than the SAT. They both cover similar material, the SAT just added a writing test. You have a choice whether or not to take the ACT with or without writing, where on the SAT, I’m sure its required. The ACT also has a science section, which doesn’t actually cover material you know, just how well you can interpret data and graphs. Also, the ACT with writing is 25 minutes shorter than the new SAT. </p>
<ol>
<li>In some areas in the south and the midwest, the ACT is the more popular test. The SAT, however, receives more media coverage, has more support in urban areas, especially in the northeast- where a plethora of colleges and universities are located. However, both are accepted by almost all universities.</li>
</ol>
<p>I took both. SAT was easier.</p>
<p>From the testing agencies for high school graduating class of 2008 (2009 is not available yet):</p>
<p>Number who took the SAT: 1,516,859
Number who took the ACT: 1,421,941</p>
<p>SAT is the predominate test in Eastern States and the west coast. ACT is the predominate test for most, but not quite all, states in between. </p>
<p>Number of colleges asserting they favor students who take one test over another: none
Number of colleges asserting they accept either test and treat applicants the same: all (except for those which now require no test and thus issue is irrelevant)</p>
<p>Colleges that normally require SAT IIs but accept the ACT in lieu of both the SAT and SAT IIs: Yale, Penn, Brown, Amherst, Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, Tufts, Conneticutt College, Duke, Pomona, Swarthmore, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan.</p>
<p>The last hold-out college that insisted one test was better than another but then finally went to accepting that the other was just as good and accepted it: Brigham Young in 2007 which had long refused to take the SAT</p>
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</p>
<p>Take into consideration that ACT is a graduation requirement in some states, so students who aren’t necessarily college-bound end up taking the ACT not in preference to SAT but solely to graduate. The statistics are a bit skewed. Not a lot, but a bit.</p>
<p>Read the title of the link (emphasis added):</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li> Note that it says four-year colleges - they would have said “colleges” if all colleges, including two-year accepted it, most likely. Do all 2 years accept it? If not, then I am correct in saying it’s not as universal.</li>
<li> Also note that it says “now” implying that it’s recent. If the SAT has been universally accepted for a long time, and the ACT is only recently universally accepted, then that makes the SAT more universal.</li>
</ol>
<p>Which two-year colleges were you planning to apply to? Most have open admission policies, not refusing any applicants.</p>
<p>For last two years it has been universal among four year colleges but no one is considering what two year colleges do (and many two years require no tests) and it is kind of pointless to care whether they have a preference (which would likely exist only because of a regional preference and the inability to deal with two different tests).</p>
<p>Even before the 1990s almost all four year colleges had begun accepting both. The handful of holdouts that eventually changed during the 2000’s were Princeton, Harvey Mudd, CalTech, and Wake Forest, SAT schools that began to accept ACT, and Bringham Young, an ACT school which began to accept the SAT. (Wake Forest has since gone to requiring no test.) During that same time, Cornell and Columbia and a couple of others I cannot recall the names of now went from stating a preference for the SAT to acknowledging that both would be treated the same.</p>
<p>It is also wrong to assume the SAT was the test “universally” accepted for a long time. The SAT started in the 1920’s and ultimately captured the east and west coast. The ACT started in 1958 and captured many states in the midwest. Plain fact is that majority of states did not even require a test until the 1960s and neither test was “universal” until those last hold-outs gave in and it was technically the ACT that first became “universal” because Bringham Young, an ACT college was the last hold-out to accept both. CalTech was the last SAT school to start accepting the ACT, and it changed shortly before BYU did.</p>