^Just keep in mind that CDS will have virtually all new SAT scores next winter. Current CDS 2017-18 includes old scores concorded to new before being mixed in, so it may still be off a bit. Waiting patiently for 2022 stats to be posted in class profiles this fall…
I remembered when D17’s class was taking tests. A good number of top students ( tends to take tests earlier so were on old SAT) were not getting 2300+ on the old SAT, the same students are all getting 35s left and right. Now fast forward to S20, he is supposed to score better on SAT ( mostly practiced SAT sample tests vs. a couple of ACT samples) , but he prefers ACT’s format. He just took both June tests and he thinks they are similar, so we are expecting equivalent scores. Technically the 2 scores should be comparable if they truly measure someone’s knowledge base… Well this is a whole other topic! ;
@whataboutcollege
Come back and tell us his scores!
From the little bit of research I have done, it seems like the colleges are accepting kids with slightly lower SAT scores than the concordance table would suggest, so for whatever reason, the colleges know that the SAT is a bit of a harder test.
With that said, @gallentjill, a 34 is still a 34 which is a great score. I think there are more high scores on the ACT than SAT, but that doesn’t really change anything for your daughter. I am assuming she will still be compared to the ACT percentiles for that college.
I think her competition is more the many kids that get 34s and 35s and how she differentiates herself from them.
@collegemomjam “From the little bit of research I have done, it seems like the colleges are accepting kids with slightly lower SAT scores than the concordance table would suggest, so for whatever reason, the colleges know that the SAT is a bit of a harder test.”
It doesn’t mean it’s a harder test, it just means that the concordance is off and most of us had already thought it was off at the top. It made sense to no one 1500+ scores were so compressed compared to the ACT. 1560 = 35 (current concordance) makes no sense. That is 3 questions in some versions of the SAT.
maybe your table is right, but I think the number of students with ACT 36 are much more than with SAT above 1580. In 134,901 2017 graduated students of Illinois , there are 248 perfect (36) ACT score. Should be more in 2018. I saw a lot ACT 36 but didn’t see many students above 1580 sat. At lest in my S19 high school and nearby high schools.
I haven’t read through all the comments on this thread, but here are the recent numbers of ACT perfect 36 scores (composite):
2017 – 2,760
2016 – 2,235
https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/P_99_999999_N_S_N00_ACT-GCPR_National.pdf
Anyone have a link to the recent SAT numbers?
Of course there are more ACT 36… There are more test takers for the ACT than ever before. Especially in 2017.
@suzyQ7 I have heard (from our very knowledgable SAT tutor who has a pulse on this) that the colleges do know it’s harder…why else would they be accepting kids with lower average SAT scores than ACT? They must do some of their own analysis, and even if it’s after the fact (that they noticed the difference after they made decisions) they must realize this by now. They might be reading this thread!
The fact the concordance is off doesn’t mean the sat is harder but rather that getting a 1420 is equivalent to getting a 32. We’ll know the exact concordance tomorrow right?
I read a whole lot in the popular cognitive research area (and sometimes even drag myself through the academic literature), and the consensus has always seemed to be that the SAT has traditionally been more a test of innate reasoning ability, while the ACT was more a test of conscientiousness, speed and acquired knowledge. Over the last two decades especially, change in format and content of the SAT have made it more “ACT-like” and less sensitive to innate reasoning ability, but at least it seems that people still think the SAT retains some of its original flavor.
To the extent all that is true, ACT should be easier to prep for, and kids whose strengths lie in diligence should favor it.
Obviously, it would be very hard to test all this, since no large scale data exist on kids’ reasoning ability anymore (in the bad old days, kids would be IQ-tested regularly in grade school, and it would have been easy to correlate those score data with subsequent performance on SAT and/or ACT).
Perhaps, a study could be set up regarding performance by kids with testing accommodations who take both tests with extra time, compared with kids without accommodation who take both tests. Better performance on the ACT by the accommodation group when controlled for by SAT score, versus ACT performance by the no accommodation group (again controlled for by SAT of course) might support the “word on the street” sense that the ACT is less sensitive to reasoning ability. Impossible to do, I’m sure, given the legalities (I mean, the testing companies can’t even tell the schools who has accommodations!), but the data certainly exist and I bet the testing companies have looked at some form of this accommodation/no accommodation question internally.
Another study could perhaps look at very young kids who take the SAT and/or ACT (preferably both). Each test sees something like 50,000 kids taking it younger than 13 (mostly for talent searches). Systematically better scores on the SAT might also support the above ideas, to the extent that the kids will not have had much time to acquire the curricular knowledge favored on the ACT from school. It would be a nice question to research because prep presumably is not as big an issue for this young cohort, as the stakes are much lower than for the college application crowd.
“The fact the concordance is off doesn’t mean the sat is harder but rather that getting a 1420 is equivalent to getting a 32. We’ll know the exact concordance tomorrow right?”
Exactly!
Also, all the old notions by people about SAT vs ACT are moot since the SAT changes it’s format to be more similar to ACT.
Again, just looking at it in a more basic manner, the SAT has a 1600 number range, yet the current concordance put 34, 35, and 36 into an 80point SAT range (1520-1600). I have a hard time believing that this was the original intention - to allow so little differentiation at the top.
The college board haven’t released the detail number in recent years.
I use the PreScholar data to estimate.
Old SAT Score New SAT Score Percentile
2400 1600 99.9826
2390 1593 99.9581
2380 1587 99.9411
2370 1580 99.9157
2360 1573 99.8801
2350 1567 99.8413
2340 1560 99.7950
2330 1553 99.7354
Of course, it is not accurate.
In 2017, the total tester number is 1,715,481.
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf
The percentile for sat 1580 is 0.999157.
So, the total number sat above 1580 is,
1715481x (1-0.999157) = 1446.150483
There should be no more than 2000 students.
In 2017, there are 2,030,038 ACT test takers,
Although the number is about 300000 more, Most high score students take both tests.
Anyway, tomorrow will know the answer:-)
^Tomorrow we will know the answer on what is the new table for ACT. However, I don’t think we’ll know how many kids are scoring 1580+ on the New test - I don’t think College Board has released any information whatsoever from which conclusions on that can be drawn - I don’t understand how you are calculating the percentile for 1580 @ILBHHS. (The whole point of this long thread is the hypothesis that the 2016 tables were incorrect and that includes conversion from Old to New)
I have two daughters that are in college…both started SAT. One switched to ACT, thought it was much easier. The other one stuck with SAT. Both were great student but my younger one that stuck with SAT was a bit of a stronger student and is at a slightly better college for what it is worth.
I think saying one test is harder or easier is probably the wrong way to say it…what I meant was that it seems more difficult to get the higher scores on the SAT (new one included) than the ACT. Many people have noticed what I have noticed and that there are lots of 35’s out there but not many 1500’s…that we have at least seen personally. This may change as more prep materials for new SAT are made available.
Either way, different kids have different tests they “prefer” and it probably comes down to personal style more than anything. But based on the way we think the charts are changing, it does seem like the new concordance will give a bit of a bump to SAT…I’m assuming because kids not doing on well as it as they had expected (does that mean it’s harder than they thought?? I have no idea).
An interesting observation I had with my son and his sophomore peers…more of them are taking the New SAT vs. ACT…not sure if this is an anomaly, but an interesting observation nonetheless. The reason I hear mostly is “I like the test format better”…
I will be watching to see who sticks with it and who switches to ACT which does happen sometimes.
@evergreen5 I get the data from the PreScholar website. The collegeconfidential doesn’t allow me to post Link. You can google the " sat percentiles", the information is on the top of search results.
@ILBHHS Prepscholar can only get data from College Board; it does not have access to any more info than we do. As Prepscholar notes, “2015 was the last time the College Board released charts detailing the exact number of test takers that got every possible score on the SAT. (Nowadays, they only release ranges.)” That Prepscholar page tries to extrapolate from the Old test to the New using the very data this thread suggests was inaccurate.
Prepscholar says “But since percentiles don’t change much from year to year, these high-precision percentiles should still hold true today.” LOL “don’t change much” and “high-precision” is oxymoronic. In fact, in Sept 2017, College Board released new, actual percentiles for Class of 2017 that did differ slightly from the original new test percentiles - on whole percentiles. Of course, as Prepscholar notes, that release didn’t include the level of detail to hundredths of a percentile.
@ILBHHS I was also looking at the percentiles from Prep scholar, you would have to go down between the 1567 and 1573 range to have the same percentile range (99.8413 to 99.8801) of students that got a 36 ACT (99.8640 percentile). And I added the high precision percentiles link if anyone else wants to do the comparison further down the list.
https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-high-precision-2016
@evergreen5 I get the data from the PreScholar website.
https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-high-precision-2016