<p>D is just finishing her first (and hopefully last!) ACT exam! How many times will you encourage your child to take the test? If a student garners a decent score on the ACT, should the SAT be taken at all? What are the pro's and con's? I have seen students post really high ACT scores and abysmal SATs in comparison, and vice versa? Which colleges other than Georgetown, now have mandatory reporting of ALL college entrance test scores from all sittings?</p>
<p>This might help answer your last question - the College Board survey of how individual colleges plan to use the new SAT score choice</p>
<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;
<p>The only reason I can think of for a high scoring ACT student to take the SAT is for National Merit. Students who take the PSAT need to have an SAT within a certain time frame for NM consideration.</p>
<p>My children take both the SAT and the ACT. DD just took her ACT today, and will be taking her SAT next month. Our DS only took it once because his composite was 32 or 33 (can’t remember) and I felt that in conjunction with getting 1390 out of 1600 for his SAT(took 2x) he was sitting in a good position. He needed to take the ACT for Notre Dame and that was the only reason we did. Now more experienced it is good to take both, since most schools will take the higher of the 2. For him if it was the lower at 32, it still has an SAT range of 1410-1450, a 33 equiv is 1460-1500, thus all of his universities took the ACT score over his SAT.</p>
<p>I don’t know of any school that only takes the SAT and not both, but I do know that 2 yrs ago the ACT was required by Notre Dame. They would accept the SAT as additional info, but you had to have the ACT as an official part of the package.</p>
<p>Check into your childs college wish list, it will tell you if they superscore. If they do keep taking either or both.</p>
<p>It is not uncommon for some children to better on one test than the other. When I picked DD up, the first words out of her mouth were “Mom, the Science part was crazy hard, and I was the only one that finished it, I swear I think I am going to get a 2!” I started laughing and told her you again prove to me that your so different than your brother, your brother got a 36!</p>
<p>This was not meant to make her feel bad, and she did not take it that way, she understood after taking the test why we tell them to take both. In her opinion she believes the SAT is a better fit for her than the ACT! IMHO the ACT is more scientific oriented. DS has a scientific mind license so the charts and graphs were an easy grasp, DD is more verbal and thus th graphs and charts were harder.</p>
<p>Agree with mcmom. We knew child’s PSAT qualified for Commended Status in our state and not Semi-Finalist so had no need to sit for SAT as every college in the country accepts the ACT also. Child took ACT once with a good result. Decided to practice and take again and raised composite by 2 points for even better result! Satisfied at that point and never took the SAT. Applied to selective schools including ivy and accepted at all with ACT only. Did have to take subject tests for ivy, but others accepted ACT in lieu of subject tests. Thought east coast student would be penalized for not taking SAT, but in our case found no bias against student! YMMV…Good Luck to you!</p>
<p>Thanks mcmom and minivan! Our academic booster group just hosted a rep from the college board two weeks ago and she did not mention the new list for “score choice” of the colleges…</p>
<p>Bullet…my d also complained about the science on today’s ACT. We’ll have to wait to see how the curve is!</p>
<p>Has the science changed on the ACT? I know that I have read on here that it is an easy section that just amounts to reading graphs, etc. but my S had the same reaction (and almost the same words) as bullet’s DD. He said that there would be no point in retaking the ACT because you need Chem II, Bio II and PHys II and he would not be able to bring up his score. He was right about it being bad for him; the science subscore was 4 points below his overall score.</p>
<p>D, a HS junior, just took the ACT for second time but the first was as a freshman, just to introduce her to the test and get a rough early benchmark. She did surprisingly well the first time (29) despite not having had a lot of the math at that point, so we’re hoping for a score well into the 30s. She also took the SAT earlier this year and did well enough, but we thought it made sense to do both and see which came out stronger. She’ll retake the SAT in May and hopefully finish her SAT II subject tests in June. It’s nice having a pretty strong SAT behind her as it really takes the pressure off subsequent tests, which in her case tends to help her performance.</p>
<p>The Science must have been “crazy hard” because I have now heard it from junior D and two of her friends…</p>
<p>My S had the same comment about the science section. He said he had to randomly guess on the last four or so, which is so unlike him. This was his second time taking the test, the first being December. He did very well then, including the science section which many kids had complained about, but wanted to see if he could raise his score at all. He thinks if anything it may have gone down this time.</p>
<p>My D thought the science was challenging, but felt she did better than the Dec test. Overall, it sounded like she might have done a bit better, I think some was being more familiar with the test at the second sitting.</p>
<p>Barrister to answer some of your questions- as others have said unless needed for National Merit, there is no reason to take take the SAT unless you want to see if you can do better. And although some schools say they want every single score (I think Stanford is another) reported, with the way the ACT reporting works where you pay separately per date, I don’t see how this would ever be enforced and I’m sure most people will only send their best ACT or possibly two if the subscores are better in one over the other, even though most schools do not superscore the ACT.</p>