My son is going to apply to engineering colleges this coming fall. (mostly east coast public schools) He has an SAT of 1500 (M-800, R-700) and ACT composite of 34 (M-35, S-32, R-32, E-35). Any recommendation on which of these is a better score to submit along with the application.
Thanks in advance.
His ACT is slightly better and has a more even distribution. Are those his only attempts for these tests? Does he plan to retake any test or take any SAT2 subject test? If he is going to take SAT2, he can pick 4 schools to submit SAT1 and the new SAT2 scores for free. If he is going to retake SAT, many schools do superscoring that may bring the composite score even higher than it appears. Both SAT 1500 and ACT34 are great scores, however, higher score will help him slightly in admission of competitive schools and to have a higher chance for merit aids in many schools.
If you can, just submit both. The college will then use to determine admission that test it considers to have the higher scores. When scores as close as yours are, sendng both is the better course. For example, some engineering programs may consider math as most important and thus your SAT may be somewhat better for those. Others may consider both the math and English as the most important and for those your ACT would be somewhat better. And all your scores are fine for any “east coast public school” and I personally see no need for a retake.
1500 and 34 are both 99th percentile. I would take into account class of 2022 score ranges (including section scores) at the colleges, whenever they are finally published, and be on the lookout for the new SAT-ACT concordance to be published jointly by College Board and ACT this summer.