Is it true that adcoms

<p>on the West and East coasts are sort of biased against the ACT, even though they say that the SAT and ACT are both acceptable?</p>

<p>I've never heard of that. Though the ACT is more common in certain areas (like the Midwest), all the colleges I've seen that accept both say that either is fine.</p>

<p>What is the job of an adcom? To get the best applicant pool possible. The colleges spend millions on advertising and marketing throughout the US and abroad. Therefore it would be acceptable for them to sweep away with one stroke a huge population that doesn't take the SAT? Does this make sense?</p>

<p>I've always been kind of skeptical of the ACT. The SAT seems to get a lot of flack about how it does or doesn't affect college performance. The ACT never seems to be mentioned in these studies.</p>

<p>While colleges do accept both there is no way of really ever finding out if one is really preferred. Colleges obviously don't want to knock out a huge portion of the applicant pool but whether they want to increase selectivity and/or student body is unknown.</p>

<p>Just to look at a couple top colleges:
Brown: 93% of class submit SAT, 27% ACT, leaving 7% just ACT
Harvard: 98% SAT, 22% ACT, 2% just ACT
Stanford: 96% SAT, 25% ACT, 4% just ACT
USC: 84% SAT, 35% ACT, 16% just ACT
Cornell: 97% SAT, 21% ACT, 3% just ACT
Yale: 92% SAT, 24% ACT, 8% just ACT</p>

<p>So at the majority of top East/West coast colleges the SAT dominates the number of enrolled students at top colleges. ~1.5mil take the SAT, ~1.3mil take the ACT.</p>

<p>Plus there is the issue of subject tests. It's hard to believe IMO that the ACT could ever be actually looked at as an equal substitute for the subject tests.</p>

<p>As noted large majority of applicants to east and west coast colleges submit SAT. The reason is that large majority of applicants for those colleges come from the east and west coast, respectively, and the SAT predominates as the test taken in high schools in those areas. There is no bias. All colleges listed in any USNews ranking list take either SAT or ACT. All profess that they do not favor applicants of one test over another. A number, such as Yale, Penn, Amherst, Tufts, Brown, state that they accept the ACT in lieu of both the SAT and SAT IIs and it is not a disadvantage to submit only ACT. So it boils down to this: you can be skeptical and believe they are all liars, or you can accept that what they say is the truth.</p>

<p>The subject tests are no problem - JUST like with the SAT, if the college requires Subject tests and you have taken the ACT, you take SAT subject tests. You do not have to have taken the SAT in order to take the subject tests.</p>

<p>We live on the west coast, my D applied to only west coast schools, she used the ACT and two SAT Subject tests. She was accepted to all seven of the schools to which she applied and received significant merit money at all of them. In her case at least, I do not believe there was any "bias against" the ACT or my D because she chose the ACT.</p>

<p>LOL: nd09: correlation and causation need to be examined. Like drusba said, the huge majority of apps come from SAT-heavy areas -- therefore of course, more SAT only kids are gonna get admitted. You need to boil down the stats a little finer than that.</p>

<p>Like drusba said, believe what you will (or what the SAT or ACT marketers want you to think). Put yourself in the shoes of the Adcoms... the board scores are one of many factors to evaluate. How is it even possible to say that a person who achieves ACT 33 is better/worse than a 2260SAT? You really can't. All one can derive is that it's a good likelihood that they meet a certain academic threshold. Thereafter, all the other areas come into play.</p>

<p>That's why I believe it's pointless for the person achieving 2300 SAT to try to boost it higher. Law of diminishing returns -- you've already arrived (in most everyone's book). Focus on thinking about your essays at that point or cranking as many As as possible your Senior year.</p>

<p>At least my 2 cents here.</p>

<p>All these kinds of questions can be asked at college information meetings, which you should attend anyway. </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/530012-fall-2008-events-where-students-can-meet-admission-officers.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/530012-fall-2008-events-where-students-can-meet-admission-officers.html&lt;/a> </p>

<p>But the answer is no. The ACT is well accepted everywhere. </p>

<p>All</a> four-year U.S. colleges now accept ACT test - USATODAY.com </p>

<p>(Thanks to another CC participant for first posting this link last year.)</p>