<p>My son took a practice, free ACT test in August (no writing) and got a 27 composite score. He took the PSAT in October, and got a 189 composite score. He's a junior. His private high school just assigned college counsellor a week ago, but we have not heard a peep about anything yet. How do they decide which direction in which to send the student....SAT or ACT? Typically, when do juniors take the real SAT or ACT their junior year (I see they have January, March and May dates), and do they take it again in the fall? Is it good or bad to take the tests several times? I feel like I'm in the dark. Have no idea if 189 is any good, if it's a predictor of his SAT, or if he needs a prep course. He doesn't seem to care about college at all right now. Frustrating!</p>
<p>Firstly, the PSAT is not always a strong indicator of how a student will do on the actual SAT. However, that PSAT score converts to ~1890 on the SAT scale.
That’s a pretty good score (unless your child is shooting for Ivy League). The ACT is also really strong for a practice test.
I would sign my kid up as soon as possible (so January or March) to take both tests and see how they score on both. If one score is strong then have them retake that test in the fall.</p>
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<p>They don’t. The student decides, or the student and his or her family decide together. I can see how a person could be confused at the outset. Often the PSAT is administered in schools to all juniors (or sometimes to all sophomores and juniors). There is at least one state (NC, maybe?) where juniors are normally required to take ACT. But other than that, no high school I know of, private or public, is going to arrange for a college-intending student to take either SAT or ACT, nor to decide which test such a student should take.</p>
<p>Students arrange to take either SAT or ACT on their own. They can register online at <a href=“http://www.collegeboard.org%5B/url%5D”>www.collegeboard.org</a> for SAT or at <a href=“http://www.actstudent.org%5B/url%5D”>www.actstudent.org</a> for ACT. The tests are administered on Saturday mornings (also on Sundays for students who cannot test on Saturdays for religious reasons), and students are responsible for paying their own registration fees and for their own transportation to and from the test centers (which may or may not be a student’s own high school).</p>
<p>In my opinion, the best way to decide which test to take is to buy some test-prep books and see where a student seems to do better. (Many kids do better on one test than they do on the other.) For SAT, use the “blue book” published by the College Board, but you can buy it for less on Amazon than on the College Board’s web site. For ACT, use the “red book” published by ACT.</p>
<p>Some kids take both tests and then send the better set of test scores to colleges. My daughter took both, but according to the published SAT-ACT concordances (e.g., <a href=“http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/pdf/reference.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/pdf/reference.pdf</a>), her scores on the two tests were essentially identical.</p>
<p>Many kids do take one (or both) in the spring of 11th grade, and plan to take one (or both) again in the fall of 12th grade if they want to improve their scores.</p>
<p>Thank you. That was very helpful information for me.</p>
<p>If he does want to apply to some higher level schools (assuming he does some studying and brings up his scores, or does better on the ACT), he may need to provide a couple of SAT Subject test scores as well. The subject tests are offered on the same date as the regular SAT (so you can’t do both on the same day). It can be kind of challenging on the calendar to get all the testing done, so it is good to review the dates and lay out a calendar. My D ended up doing the following:</p>
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<li>Took SAT twice in winter/spring of junior year (a few months apart so she could actually study)</li>
<li>Took ACT once in spring of Junior year. Just to see how it went… it went well, but not as good as her best SAT, so she ended up not sending it to colleges.</li>
<li>She took two subject tests on another SAT date spring of Junior year. Was not happy with one of the scores, so took it again the first date the SAT was offered in the fall.</li>
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<p>Whew. That was 5 test dates in 10 months. Working around state competition in a couple of her activities, etc. made it particularly interesting. But this positioned her very well to be able to finalize her list of colleges to apply to early, because she had her final test scores pretty much in hand by mid-summer. Some of her friends had to wait because they didn’t finish up their testing until fall of senior year, and couldn’t really judge where they might get in without the scores. So it is better to make sure almost all testing is done in junior year.</p>
<p>Also, as a side note, not all subject test are offered every SAT date. A few are only offered a couple of times a year. So that needs to be considered as well. Also, seats fill up early at a lot of testing sites. So register at least a couple months in advance for each test date.</p>
<p>It is true that some selective colleges and universities will ask for scores from SAT subject tests too.</p>
<p>On the other hand it’s also true that many of theses schools will accept ACT in lieu of SAT reasoning test + subject tests. Check the admissions pages of colleges’ web sites for details.</p>
<p>Thanks for that info. Great idea to lay out a calendar plan of when to take the regular tests and subject tests.</p>
<p>Okay, I have wondered why any student would even consider the SAT testing when a lot of times they also have to take 2 subject tests to go with it. Isn’t the ACT the way to go? One test, and the student is done.</p>
<p>There are only a small number of colleges that accept the ACT in replacement for SAT plus subject tests. I know Swarthmore is one. I am sure other posters can name more. But my kids applied to 18 colleges between the two of them. Swarthmore was the only one that did this, although several did not require any subject tests. A few schools have specific subject tests they want (eg, Harvey Mudd requires the SAT Math II test). Some schools say they are “optional”, and some explicitly state that they won’t look at them (St. Mary’s College of Maryland would be an example of that). But I think a strong subject test can help show depth in a given area for a candidate. Or breadth (not that colleges care so much about that) if they can do very will in disparate subjects (eg, Literature and Physics, or something like that). My D did very well in on the Literature and Math II tests, and sent them to all of her colleges.</p>
<p>You might note that the curve varies among them. The College Board (that money absorbing institution that you are about to become acquainted with!) publishes a list that shows what percentile a given score falls in for each subject test:</p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>I often see people saying on these boards that their given subject test score was pretty good, then they name a score that was only 50th percentile (not so good for the top schools that often want the scores). So this is just helpful to really judge the true quality of any given subject test score.</p>
<p>If you have started to put together a college list at all, you can look at their websites and see if they want Subject Tests. Your son might not apply to any colleges that require them.</p>
<p>Tufts and Duke are two others that will accept ACT in place of SAT + subject tests. When my daughter was applying, our experience was that only a fairly small number of highly selective colleges and universities required subject tests at all (as intparent said), but that out of those schools, only a small subset (often, the most selective ones–Yale, Harvard and the like) would not take ACT in place of SAT + subject tests. YMMV. Of course, one does need to check the requirements of each college or university on its web site.</p>
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<p>This kind of depends on both your son’s score and the colleges and universities that he’s targeting. If your son has done well enough on the ACT for the colleges or universities he’s interested in, then maybe so. But some students do just score higher on SAT than on ACT. If you’re looking at colleges and universities that aren’t all that selective, then a good enough score is good enough, and there’s no need to worry about whether you should submit your 28 on the ACT or your 650/640/680 on the SAT. (Either of those scores is plenty good for most of the 2500+ four-year colleges and universities in the U.S.) But kids who want to get into Ivies or Amherst or Northwestern or MIT worry about these things a lot because admission is incredibly competitive and they really do need to show themselves to their best advantage.</p>