I am a senior who is planning to to take my final college entrance exams in December. I scored a 29 on the ACT, which is not up to the standard for the schools I want to get admitted to. And I just took the New Sat yesterday, I felt the test is a lot easier than the ACT, but I still feel that if I studied a little more, I could have done even better than yesterday. Now I am trying to decide whether to take the SAT again in December and study to get a 1500 and above (my current score is around the 1400s) or trying to study for both tests, the SAT and ACT, at the same time, and boost the scores for both of them, but I may need to squeeze in more time for it and it may not be as efficient as just studying for one test. But it is definitely a good choice in case I bomb one of the tests.
What should I do? Register and study for one test or two? I heard most students who apply to selective schools have high scores on both the SAT or ACT. Don’t know what I should do…
Study for whichever one you think you have the best chance of raising your score on and take that one. Trying to increase your score on both tests just dilutes the amount of preparation you can do.
Not sure where you’ve heard “most” students have high scores on both tests. It’s not at all uncommon to do better on one than on the other. And not everyone takes both.
When you submit both SAT and ACT, colleges use the one with the higher score to determine admisison. Thus, submitting both an above average SAT and an above average ACT score will not result in anything more than having only either the SAT or the ACT score considered (depending on which one of the two the college believes is higher). In other words, the two won’t add up to a high score.
Years ago when the ACT was less common outside the Midwest that was true, but nowadays most schools don’t favor one over the other. OP should strive for very high on whichever test plays to OP’s strengths.
If you just took the SAT, and obviously had taken it before (to have a score in the 1400’s), and felt it wasn’t that bad (i.e., you think you did well, better than previous the 1400+ score), what makes you think you did not hit your goal of 1500+?
As someone above mentioned, they want only scores from one exam type. They mean it when they say “OR”.
@Waiting2exhale Just didn’t study much. I took two practice exams and reviewed them. Other than that, I worked on several lessons from Dr. Steve’s math book. I feel like I still have weaknesses; there is this one question type about combining sentences on the writing section that I always get wrong.