<p>Agree with posts #29 and #39 regarding the regionalism effects on ACT/SAT test takers. btw- I know the ACT is NOT required for HS graduation is WI. You also have to consider that some of the most well known/“elite” schools still draw most of their students from their region. Times have changed since our day. Back in my day the ACT was required of WI residents but OOS applicants could submit either ACT or SAT results- no longer the case. Do be aware that not all schools allow superscoring- you can report more than one test date but a school might not look at the best combination of scores. This seems most fair to me as otherwise a student could plan two test dates, concentrating on different areas for each one (and neglecting the others) in order to maximize their score. All in all, a student is who he/she is, a test is just a snapshot of the whole person.</p>
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<p>No, the only Ivies that require SAT Subject Tests of all applicants are Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth. Cornell requires them for some programs, but not for others. Yale, Brown, Penn, and Columbia don’t require applicants submitting the ACT with Writing to submit SAT Subject Tests. But pretty much any college will consider them if submitted, so if you take them and get strong scores, it’s probably to your advantage to submit them.</p>
<p>The superscoring thing is tricky. Most public universities don’t superscore. Many private colleges and universities will superscore the SAT but not the ACT. There’s a technical reason for this: you can include multiple test dates (and both the SAT Reasoning Test and SAT Subject Tests) in a single SAT score report for a single fee. The ACT charges a separate fee for each test date reported. So it can get very (sometimes prohibitively) expensive for ACT-takers to report all the test dates that give them the best superscore, for every college they’re applying to. Recognizing this, and not wanting to give a big advantage to those who can afford to pay for multiple score reports, the colleges decline to superscore the ACT. Presumably an enlightened admissions committee would recognize this makes the ACT and the SAT not exactly comparable, since for ACT-takers they’re usually getting only the best single sitting score while for SAT-takers they’re getting multiple sittings superscored. But whether they actually parse the numbers that closely, I’m not sure. I suspect many of them would say it’s nothing to get hung up on as fine gradations in test scores are not often the decisive factor in a holistic admissions evaluation, but admissions decisions–and anything that can give an application an edge–probably seem more momentous to the applicant than to the admissions committee.</p>
<p>All the colleges D applied to superscored her ACT scores.</p>
<p>The SAT serves as an IQ test, as I have often written, and one reason to take it, even if your ACT score is excellent, is that the types of firms (finance and consulting) that would use a standardized test as an IQ test tend to be coastal and SAT-biased. Even a high school senior who is not interested in or even aware of such jobs may change his mind four years later. So taking the SAT is a form of insurance.</p>
<p>For that purpose, Beliavsky, one could take the GRE.</p>
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<p>Some humanities majors and to a lesser extent social science majors may get rusty on SAT/GRE math by the end of college. It’s better to take the SAT in 12th grade when you are “warm”, even if you have a good ACT score.</p>
<p>Having worked entire career as a management consultant at tier-one accounting/ consulting firms - I have never known a firm to request SAT scores - and I have been heavily involved with recruiting.</p>
<p>Kids get into good schools submitting only ACT scores all the time. Don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>If colleges didn’t believe in the value of the ACT, they wouldn’t ask for scores in the first place. It won’t affect your child’s application negatively in any way.</p>
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<p>Don’t burst ideological bubbles with real life experience now ;)</p>
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<p>Googling “consulting SAT scores” produces many stories of people who were asked for SAT scores by consulting firms.</p>
<p>^^^ To which you reply, " I didn’t take it. Would you like to see my Wechsler scores ?" :)</p>
<p>Daughter at Wellesley submitted ACT + writing.Accepted RD.Don’t sweat SAT.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your insight.</p>
<p>My D, now a freshman at Tufts, submitted high ACT and 3 SATII scores and was accepted ED.</p>