<p>I took the PLAN and PSAT this fall, as a sophomore. I got a 1970 on the PSAT and a 32 on the PLAN. Just yesterday, I pulled up a conversion chart to see how they compared. I thought my scores would be pretty comparable, but it turns out a 32 on the PLAN/ACT converts to a 2130 SAT/PSAT.</p>
<p>Soo...what does this mean? Is the ACT easier than the SAT? Was it a fluke? Was I just having a better day the day I took the PLAN? And what does this entail for when I take the real SAT and ACT? If I also do significantly better on the ACT than SAT, can I just send that score in? Or do the majority of colleges want to see your SAT? More specifically, do colleges like Santa Clara, Pitzer, Whitman and University of Portland want SAT?</p>
<p>Thank you!!</p>
<p>Clarification: is 32 your PLAN score (the maximum possible) or your ACT-projected score based on PLAN (usually done by adding +4 to your PLAN score)?</p>
<p>Oh good point! My school has this online college planning tool called Naviance, and the score that I see all the time when I compare my scores to colleges is a 32. But I took a closer look and it seems that they converted my PLAN into the “equivalent ACT score”, which I guess is the same as the projected score? My actual PLAN composite is a 27. Does that change things? Sorry for the confusion!</p>
<p>Yes it does a 32 plan score means you are projected to score a 34-36 ACT while a 27 (I actually got a 27 PLAN as a sophomore also (: ) projects a 28-32 ACT, if I remember correctly. On the real ACT I actually scored a 35 which is about a 2330 SAT.</p>
<p>The score charts don’t mean anything in terms of difficulty. Some students do much better on the ACT than the SAT and vice versa. And yes you can report either the ACT or SAT or both. Colleges do not prefer either although I took the SAT because I applied for engineering and I wanted a very high or perfect math score on the SAT on my college app and I sent both. Although a 35 is a 2330, I scored a 2260 on the SAT, but at that score, it’s not a big difference.</p>
<p>A 32 would be at the high end of your projected range. If you project to the middle of the range, a 30, the converted SAT equivalent is about 2000, which is roughly the same as your PSAT score.</p>
<p>Is one “easier”? Most testers feel the ACT asks more straightforward, less “puzzle-like”, questions, but time pressure is greater. ACT is more quantitative (Math and Science = 50% vs. Math = 33% on the SAT). You decide what is easier for you. Some students do score consistently better on one test than the other but in general results correlate at almost .90 – very similar results for most people. </p>
<p>Obviously you need to get some actual scores, not projected scores, but anticipate that they will convert fairly closely to each other. Once you get scores feel free to pick either one or both to send – all schools accept both.</p>