<p>Is it true that more people take SAT over ACT? It seems to me that a lot of colleges accept either SAT or ACT but I'm not sure whether the admission officers give more weightage to SAT over ACT. </p>
<p>There is a SAT Vs ACT curve, If two people one has taken SAT and other person took ACT and have scored the equivalent points, all other things being equal, will they be at par with each other?</p>
<p>When my son was prepping for the standardized tests, it was recommended that he take practice tests of both. Whatever test he did better in was the one he should exclusively study for. </p>
<p>He, like many boys do, did better with the ACT. It wasn’t an issue anywhere. As far as we know, only two schools on his list “translated” the ACT into SAT. Since the top score is 36, each score translates to a range of SAT scores. In both cases, admissions assigned him the highest SAT score in the range. </p>
<p>So he enjoyed a double positive. He took the test he did better on and he was awarded with the highest possible score at schools that translated the ACT into SAT scores.</p>
<p>BTW, our son’s guidance counselor thought we were crazy to have our son ONLY take the ACT. She swore it would harm his chances. After we actually visited the admissions offices of the schools he was interested in, we discovered they all gave equal respect to the ACT and the SAT. </p>
<p>I often suggest people visit schools and make private appointments with admissions, the department heads of interest, and career development office well in advance of application time. The amount of garbage information you will be fed from other parents (and even guidance counselors) is astounding!</p>
<p>Recently, the number of students taking ACT has exceeded that for SAT.</p>
<p>Depending on where you live, the SAT is usually more popular among students. However, admissions officers weight both equally and most colleges have no set preference. As the poster before me said, the ACT has more test-takers than the SAT now.</p>
<p>Last year became the first year that more graduating seniors had taken the ACT than the SAT. Colleges located everywhere accept either without preference and one test is not favored over another when deciding admission. “Popularity” of either test, until recently, depended mainly on which states the SAT or the ACT had captured historically before the other could get a foothold in the state. For the SAT that was the US eastern states and west coast states and for ACT it was most of the states in the middle of the country between those two geographical areas. What has occurred more recently is that the percentage of students taking the ACT in those eastern and west coast states has steadily increased annually and now one of the traditional SAT states, North Carolina, has adopted the ACT as the test to be taken by all high school juniors to comply with the federal no child left behind laws which require schools to have data to show how students are actually progressing.</p>
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<p>Yes. Some exceptions:
<p>So the answer is mostly yes. One other factor in deciding is PSAT. If you are in the 93+ percentile rank and want to go for NMS you will want to study for the PSAT. If you do that, you might as well take the SAT because its pretty much the same test.</p>
<p>There are SAT-ACT conversion charts instead of “a curve”. Each school put different emphasis in different sections and may have a different conversion chart. My suggestion is, if you do obviously better with one test than the other, submit the better one. If you are not sure, you should always submit both. For most schools, they would consider the better of the two according to their conversion chart anyway.</p>
<p>they would consider the better of the two according to their conversion chart anyway.</p>
<p>I was going to ask this, I know many schools super score. I was not sure whether they will super score between SAT and ACT also. I thought they restricted it to super scoring among SAT scores and ACT scores but not between SAT and ACT.</p>
<p>SAT: Majority of colleges superscore if you submit more than one SAT test; the rest, including most public universities, use that test with highest composite or, for colleges that do not use the writing section, that test with highest combined math and reading sections.</p>
<p>ACT: Majority use that test with highest composite, minority superscore ACTs.</p>
<p>Combining SAT and ACT: Most colleges do not mix ACT with SAT; if you submit both they use the one they believe is the higher. However, there are a small number, including Gtech and Rose Hulman that do. Gtech will use the combination of the following for admission: (a) highest math score from either test; (b) highest reading SAT or highest English from ACT; and (c) highest writing score from SAT or highest combined English/writing score (a separately reported number) from the ACT. It does not use composite scores from either test and also ignores the reading and science sections of the ACT. Rose Hulman is the same except that it does not do (c) because it does not consider writing scores at all.</p>
<p>Combining SAT and ACT: Most colleges do not mix ACT with SAT; if you submit both they use the one they believe is the higher.</p>
<p>Isn’t that same as super scoring between ACT and SAT composite scores? When I said super core between SAT and ACT in my previous post, I meant super scoring on composite score not on sub-scores. </p>
<p>In other words let’s say a student submits SAT score of 2000 and the ACT composite score of XX which is equivalent to 2100. If school super scored between SAT and ACT, then your super score will be 2100.</p>
<p>When they look at individual section scores of both tests, it is not counted as superscoring. Some schools would explicitly say they will look at individual section scores. Superscoring is within SAT (or within ACT in a limited number of schools). Even worse, some schools only look at your ACT scores with writing in it even if you have a better ACT score without writing in another attempt.</p>