<p>The conversion chart I see most often is incorrect in my opinion. I received a 28, which was in the 93rd national percentile of the time I took it. On average, a 28 is in the 92nd national percentile. An SAT score of 1980 is in the same percentile, yet the most popular ACT-SAT conversion chart converts a 28 to an 1860. Why is that?</p>
<p>use a verbal plus math conversion and your 28 goes to a 1260 on the percentile scale. </p>
<p>a 28 also goes to a 1890/1900 on the 2400 scale. </p>
<p>So why your scale was slightly lower than what the real scale is, its definitely not a 1980. Check your percentiles again.</p>
<p>It is. I've done my research. Don't tell me it's not unless you can show me a link proving otherwise.</p>
<p>i think for your research you used percentiles based on individual sections, which you cant do, you have to use composites.</p>
<p>Admissions</a> Research: ACT-SAT Concordance - UT Austin </p>
<p>Some colleges make concordance tables based on the actual paired test results of their applicants.</p>
<p>Those popular conversion charts you see on-line, which should only be viewed as a general guide, seem to be incorrect because, in fact, they are incorrect if you are talking about now rather than long past. The one thing those tables do prove is that most people fail to read the fine print.</p>
<p>The folks at College Board created a conversion chart that it has had on-line for years. What most fail to read is the bullet points at the bottom, one of which says:</p>
<p>"Data in this table is based on 103,525 test takers who took both the SAT and the ACT between October 1994 and December 1996."</p>
<p>College Board has never done another study since then. Its table is the genesis for all those popular ones you find on-line. Even those that now seem to convert the ACT score to the new SAT score simply took that old table and pro rated the numbers, e.g., a 1400 SAT on the old comparison table is now simply a 2100, and they did no new studies. </p>
<p>In other words, the tables you usually find on-line would be correct if you were living in 1996 but are now long out-dated. You should be aware that many colleges that do comparison tables (and many do not) create their own based on more recent test score data and those tables vary from what you find on-line, and, as a result, at many colleges ACT scores now compare to higher SAT scores than they did before -- an example is the UT Austin article with the Texas table mentioned above which itself is now outdated since it is based on data from 1999 and 2000.</p>
<p>use tokens data, its from an actual university which is what im guessing you care about</p>
<p>and i highly doubt that scores are so inaccurate and inconsistent that in 6 years people have begun to score 100 points lower</p>
<p>A Harvard admissions representative who traveled to my town in May 2007 said that Harvard simply uses the tables one can find online--which may be one way of saying that Harvard doesn't obsess about ACT and SAT comparisons. I'm sure most colleges at the high end of selectivity have a strong sense of how high is high enough for admission on either brand of test, and most colleges in the middle range of selectivity are just happy to have students who remember to submit the test scores before the admission deadline (which may be very late in the school year). In other words, I wouldn't worry about this a lot. </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications.</p>
<p>Here's an empirical approach to see how schools equate ACT to SAT. For schools that report middle 50% scores for both ACT and SAT, I took a given schools 25th percentile ACT score and compared it to their 25th percentile SAT score (CR + M). I then repeated this for the given 75th percentile scores. This was done for 150 of the top schools that report both sets of scores. I then averaged the SAT scores for each level of ACT score. The results are as follows:</p>
<p>ACT/ Empirical SAT Equivalent / Concordance Table SAT Equivalent/ Diff
34 1560 1520 +40
33 1515 1470 +45
32 1470 1420 +50
31 1425 1380 +45
30 1380 1340 +40
29 1340 1300 +40
28 1305 1260 +45
27 1250 1220 +30
26 1210 1180 +30
25 1175 1140 +35
24 1135 1110 +25</p>
<p>This approach shows results more similar to using percentile equivalents than the old concordance table suggests. In both cases, ACT scores compare more favorably to SAT scores than implied by the old concordance table, which seems to be the standard that so many use. </p>
<p>Perhaps it's time to calculate a new concordance table.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I then averaged the SAT scores for each level of ACT score.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I doubt that that is mathematically justified.</p>
<p>OK, so now we have three methods for comparing SAT scores to ACT scores. The first is the Concordance Between ACT Assessment and Recentered SAT I Sum Scores study completed in the fall of 1997. This is the standard most people use today. It was based on an analysis of 100,000 students who took both the ACT and the SAT in 1995. The bulk of the students come from the states of Florida and Texas, as well as data provided by University of California, Duke, Ohio State, Ball State, U of Illinois, Northwestern, U of South Carolina, Texas A&M, U of Texas, Baylor, Rice, Prairie View A&M, U Maryland, & Stephen Austin.</p>
<p>This study, although thorough, is based on data that is more than 12 years old, doesnt reflect changes made to both the ACT and SAT over the past 12 years, and is heavily dominated by students from one state, Texas.</p>
<p>The second approach is the percentile equivalent which looks at recent test results and compares percentiles. i.e. if 95th percentile for the SAT is 1380 (CR + M) and 95th percentile for the ACT is 29, then a 1380 is equivalent to a 29. (By comparison, the concordance table says that a 1380 is equal to a 31).</p>
<p>The current percentile tables reflect a national group of students, with roughly 1.5 million having taken the SAT and roughly 1.2 million having taken the ACT. Many students take both exams.</p>
<p>The third approach is looking at empirical data provided by schools and comparing 25th & 75th percentile SAT scores to 25th & 75th percentile ACT scores. This approach provides a quick & dirty estimation of how schools actually compare the two tests. For a school that is indifferent between the SAT and ACT, a 25th percentile student for one test should be equal to a 25th percentile student for the other test. Clearly this is not a rigorous analysis because it is based on limited publicly available data, but it still has validity. </p>
<p>The results from this approach more closely match the percentile equivalent method.</p>
<p>The conclusion I draw is that the standard method in use today is the least accurate and should be recalibrated.</p>