<p>At my school, when you hear someone has over a 2000 SAT, you automatically think they're a genius. But when you hear someone has a 32+ ACT, it's no big deal, even though it's very rare where I go to school.</p>
<p>It seems like, in general, the SAT is viewed more highly. Why is this and do admissions officers/committees hold the SAT in a higher esteem than the ACT as well?</p>
<p><a href=“File:Sat-act preference.PNG - Wikipedia”>http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sat-act_preference.PNG</a></p>
<p>This is a map that shows the prevalence of either the SAT or ACT in certain areas. Quite simply, it’s heavily based on geography. To sum up the map in one sentence, the SAT is geared towards the fringes of the country and the ACT is more important near the center. Do you by chance live in an SAT dominated area?</p>
<p>^ Having MORE testers does NOT mean preference in college. Either test is accepted at ALL schools. Neither test is preferred by colleges (except for one school in CA that prefers the ACT!!). As a matter of fact the ACT surpassed the SAT in tests taken a few years ago. Try the search button next time.</p>
<p>Unless you assume that college admission officials are liars, colleges do not weigh either test more highly than the other. What you do have is the historical happenstance that most high school students in eastern and western states take the SAT while most in the middle of the country take the ACT, with the result that you can get many high school students to believe, incorrectly, that the test that dominates in their state is somehow the preferred test. </p>
<p>The SAT was created in the mid-1920’s and by the late 1950s, College Board had managed to get many eastern and western states to accept it as a test to be taken by high school students. The ACT was created in the late 1950s and was promoted based on two recognized weaknesses of the SAT: the ACT was geared toward testing what you actually learned in high school instead of being an IQ like test like the SAT, and ACT claimed not to be biased against women and minorities (a questionable claim) like the SAT was believed to be. If you study history, you may learn that the SAT was created by a Princeton professor and College Board Committee head in charge of designing admissions tests,whose purpose in creating the SAT was to have an admissions test that colleges could use to assure minorities, and immigrants from other than Anglo-Saxon and Nordic nations, who scored lower on average on the test than well-off whites, did not get into college and “mix” with the superior white race; not unexpectedly, College Board never mentions that history today.</p>
<p>The ACT thus became the test of choice in most of the middle of the country where the SAT had not been able to gain control. Preferences existed for decades but eventually colleges slowly did away with preferences and signifcantly did away with them in the 1990s through about 2006 to the point that today colleges of any rank save one do not state a preference for either test. The one is Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a college in an SAT state, which six years ago decided to do away with its no preference positon and adopt one – it prefers the ACT.</p>
<p>In the last 15 years, the ACT has made significant headway into the SAT powerhouse to the point that beginning in 2011, the ACT actually overcame the SAT as the test taken by the majority of high school students. If you are looking at good business management, you will find the ACT had a plan to become the test of choice and the SAT had none to maintain its leadership role. Using its perception that it tests students on what they learn in high school, the ACT began in the early 2000’s to heavily lobby states to adopt it as the test to meet the testing requirements of no child left behind laws and has since succeeded in making itself the required test taken by high school students in numerous states (SAT eventually tried a counteroffiencsive that won it only three minor states). To the chagrin of College Board, in 2012, ACT succeeded in getting North Carolina, one of those eastern states in which the SAT dominated for many decades, to adopt the ACT as the required test for high school students. Meanwhile, in 2005, SAT shot itself in the foot by adoting the SAT that had three sections instead of two by adding a required writing section. It did so in response to the whining of elitist colleges like Yale that a writing section was necessary while most colleges did not even want a writing section. The result was a test that was way too long and perceived by test-takers to be more uncertain in results sending many in the east and west to also take the ACT, e.g., the percentage of students submitting ACT to ivies shot up from the low single digit percentages in the early 2000s to the now close to 40% of applicants, with that addition coming mostly from applicants in eastern and western states.</p>
<p>Also, outside of the ACT battle, the SAT suffered a major blow to its bottom line when the UCs (with over 50,000 test takers per year) decided in 2011 (for 2012 applicants) to drop its requirement for SAT subject tests. Moreover, ACT has gained further by more colleges, which do require subject tests, adoting the rule that the ACT can be submitted in lieu of both the SAT and subject tests. </p>
<p>The combined result of events throughout the 2000’s is that the ACT is now the leading test with the SAT finally realizing it may be fighting for its future life, particluarly if more states adopt the ACT as the test required to comply with no chold left behind laws. It is thus no accident that College Board announced last year that it was going to change its test to one that more closely tests what students learn in high school (i.e., like the ACT). In any event, SAT lost the battle of being the “preferred” test amd now colleges unifromily assert they do not weigh one test higher over the other.</p>
