<p>While colleges (at least the ones I've seen) will take either the SAT-I or the ACT, is there any sort of advantage to submitting one over the other with one's application? This I ask because I've seen more people sumbitting SAT instead of ACT, though I could be wrong, my spectrum is still limited.</p>
<p>And, on that vein, what's with the ACT satisfying all the standardized test requirements in some places? For example, Duke. Does anyone have any idea why, if you choose the SAT option, you have to take three Subject Tests, and if you choose the ACT option, the ACT (with writing) is enough?</p>
<p>How it was explained to me, the ACT is a better test (acheivement) in determining the knowledge you have on a subject and includes 5 instead of 3. They have a optional writing component that the more elilte colleges say is required or "not required,but encouraged". It was a test mainly given in the Mid-West and now is branching out. My son's school greatly encourages it and is going to just have the ACT at their school (as a testing site) in a couple of years. My son is hoping he gets a great score after 2 trys and can not worry about the SAT as much and the added subject tests. The other great thing about the ACT is that you can send the scores when YOU want, they just don't go automatically. Some kids send them all, but I was told if you don't do as well on the SAT and do very well on the ACT, they ignore the SAT scores. I don't think you'll find many schools, if any, that wont take it in lieu of the SAT. It sounds like a good idea to take them all, and see what the results are.</p>
<p>Debruns, you of course meant achievement, not aptitude. The SAT attempts to measure aptitude and it fails terribly (because aptitude cannot be measured). The ACT measures achievement, aka what you have learned, which makes it a valid test. The reason it replaces the SAT II's is because they do the same thing (measure achievement). Some of the ACT sections test the same thing the SAT II's test (ACT english section = sat ii writing multiple choice ... act math = sat ii math iic ... act writing = sat ii writing essay section ... act reading = sat ii literature)</p>
<p>Yes, I was correcting it as you wrote! : ) There is a lot of misinformation, sometimes on various sites, about the ACT. One poster on this site said most colleges didn't except them, especially the Ivies, and that's not true at all. But as with all the things pertaining to college admissions, etc., it's a learning process everyday.</p>
<p>SAT has always dominated in the east and far west but ACT has long done so for most states in between the two. Here in Illinis all high school juniors take it because it is part of the state required battery of achievement tests for juniors. For almost all colleges, you can submit the ACT or SAT and which one is submitted makes no difference in the decision to admit -- which one is actually the higher score obviously can. </p>
<p>The ACT is designed to be more of a test to measure what you have learned in high school while the SAT generally avoided being that; it is also more straightforward with fewer tricky questions than the SAT but provides less time to answer an equal number of questions. The new SAT professes to be headed in the direction of an achievement test. In fact, the new SAT exists mainly because California, one of the SAT's biggest money producing states, threatened to dump it in favor of requiring the ACT or just SAT II's.</p>
<p>SAT II's are required by only a rather small minority of colleges and almost all of those are in the east or California. Because the ACT and SAT II's are both considered acheivement tests, a number of colleges that require SAT II's will actually take the ACT in lieu of both the SAT and SAT II's. Those colleges include Yale, Brown, Penn, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Boston College, Tufts, Wellesley, Williams, Amherst, Vassar, Trinity, and a number of others.</p>
<p>Fewer students total per year have previously taken the ACT than SAT but not by much. There is an interesting offshoot of the new SAT. The ACT has seen a 17% increase in the number of applicants seeking to take its test this semester, and the vast majority of that increase is from the middle Atlantic and northeastern states where the SAT is most dominant (possibly a result of students having concern over the "unknown" of the new SAT test), and the number of ACT test takers this year is on its way to exceeding the number who take the SAT.</p>