<p>I took the SAT during my senior year and got the following scores:</p>
<p>570 Critical Reading
500 Math
550 Writing</p>
<p>What I'm wondering is, what's the difference between the SAT and the ACT? What type of student would prefer the ACT? The SAT? I read somewhere that some students prefer one over the other. </p>
<p>Also, would it be wise to, at the very least, try out the ACT and see what it's all about since it seems to be accepted in more east coast schools now? I'd be lying if I told you I'm happy with my scores so I'm trying to figure out if I should give the ACT a shot. Mind you, I intend to take the SAT again to see if I can better my score.</p>
<p>Groan -- not again. Sorry, this comes up so much.</p>
<p>If you go to the offical web sites for the tests you can see what they entail. You can also google and find people who compare the tests. (Be sure to go for something recent because of how the SAT changed.)</p>
<p>Now I would say the major differences are:
1. Difficulty in the SAT is trickiness of questions. Difficulty in the ACT is time management.
2. SAT goes back and forth between math and verbal sections. The ACT tests a thing and that's it.
3. ACT has a science reasoning section.
4. SAT has a penalty for wrong answers; the ACT doesn't.
5. SAT does not have score choice; the ACT does (meaning you can pick which scores are reported to colleges).</p>
<p>You will see people say that the SAT is more an aptitude test and the ACT tests more for what you have learned in school. But frankly I've never seen that from looking at sample tests. They are equal in predicting college grades and hence there is no reason for colleges to continue preferring one over the other.</p>
<p>The only school I know of now that doesn't accept the ACT is Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>I don't know if someone can really predict if they will do better on a particular test. Take a sample one and see. You can google and find SAT/ACT score conversion charts. Some may say they aren't completely accurate, but they will give you some idea if you are doing better on one test if there is enough of a difference.</p>
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I took the SAT during my senior year and got the following scores:
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did you mean junior year? what year are you in now?
definitely retake the SAT I'm sure your scores will go up.
I would still take the ACT too... although so far I've only done one ACt practice test it seems like the ACT is really easy if you're a quick test taker... and really hard if you're not.</p>
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Ah, I can't believe I became a "<em>Groan</em> Not again..." thread creator.
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</p>
<p>Don't worry about it. I'm sure I repeat myself enough in various forums that people think, "There she goes again ... give it a rest ... we've heard it all before!" LOL</p>
<p>You can retake it to try and get a better score. I didn't do POORLY on my test but I'm not entirely pleased with my results. Clearly, my weakest area was math so I'm curious as to how I'd do if I retook it after brushing up on some things. A lot of what I struggled on was stuff I hadn't studied yet, stuff I'd started but hadn't reached that level in.</p>
<p>Yeah, this is what I've heard to. I've been discussing this issue for years, and the only holdout people can point to now is Harvey Mudd. I also saw an article about the increased use of the ACT and it also said that HM is it.</p>
<p>Now there used to be others that required the SAT but they have changed their policies.</p>