<p>It seems to me that average ACT scores for college admissions tend to be much lower than their equivalent SAT scores. Why is that?</p>
<p>For example:
Georgetown University, middle 50% scores:
ACT: 26 - 33
SAT: 1310 - 1490</p>
<p>However, 26 - 33 would correspond to 1190-1460.
1190 is very far from 1310. What's going on?</p>
<p>Never noticed that, seems interesting. Anyone have any ideas?</p>
<p>Schools on the east coast are flooded with coast applicants, who generally take SATs. They want, however, to balance their class with people from the middle of the country w/o coasts, who generally take ACTs. They are willing to take a drop on ACTs to get the “50 states” designation</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because the SAT is taken on the coasts where there tend to be more applicants (and more competitive applicants), whereas the ACT is more of a Midwest thing where they might want to draw students from?</p>
<p>Pure guesswork.</p>
<p>This is very common with so many top schools, and I have been wondering the same thing. My one thought is that many underrepresented states take the ACT, which may contribute.</p>
<p>US News ranks based on SATs, not ACTs.</p>
<p>is georgetowns middle 50 really 26-30? that sounds way too low. but i’ll believe you because i don’t care about georgetown. (sorry!)</p>
<p>seriously, it seems so strange that a 26 would put you inside the middle 50% for georgetown. makes me want to choose the ACT instead of the SAT…</p>
<p>That IS an interesting observation. Let’s analyze why! :)</p>
<p>okay you do that, i’ll just go to sleep.</p>
<p>just checked on collegeboard.com</p>
<p>the middle 50% for georgetown is 26-33</p>
<p>oh wow, I did not read the OP correctly,lol.</p>
<p>I thought you said 26-30,hehe,my bad.</p>
<p>One factor might be that most highly selective schools superscore the SAT, reporting the highest subsection score for each student, while most do not superscore the ACT, reporting only the highest single-sitting composite score for each student. It could be that if you took just the highest single-sitting composite SAT score for each student, that number would be significantly lower on average than what gets reported for that student in the Common Data Set, US News, etc.; i.e., it would look much more like the highest single-sitting composite ACT score.</p>
<p>The percentile ranks are a bit closer…the percentile rank for a 1310 on the SAT is 91, whereas the percentile rank for a 26 on the ACT is an 83. Based on percentile ranks and not the concordance table, a 26 on the ACT is more akin to a 1230 (the percentile rank for an 1190 is only a 78).</p>
<p>I agree with Anon and Illuminar- some of the difference is probably due to the SAT being popular on the coasts, which are usually overrepresented in applications, and the ACT being popular in the Midwest, which are usually underrepresented. ACT students may get a boost from their geographic location.</p>
<p>collegeboard is incorrect. According to IPEDS, GU’s 25th % is 28. And, don’t forget that most colleges superscore the SAT but not the ACT.</p>
<p>[College</a> Navigator - Georgetown University](<a href=“College Navigator - Search Results”>College Navigator - Georgetown University)</p>
<p>If you did better on the ACT than the SAT and choose to submit the ACT but are from the East Coast is that a problem since most people from the East Coast submit SAT scores?</p>
<p>ACT score doesn’t use a range but the SAT score is using a range?</p>
<p>Charliesmon:</p>
<p>It is in the colleges own best interest to only use the highest score (SAT or aCT) since that is what they publish.</p>
<p>Chelsea: the link I provided shows GU’s ACT range to be 28-32.</p>
<p>I’ve looked at this one pretty hard, and have a few observations/theories…</p>
<p>1st, I agree with the observation that a school’s mid 50% ACT is usually lower than the 50% SAT, using the concordance tables for conversion…especially the lower end seems out of wack.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>reported SAT is superscored, whereas ACT is not. Therefore, when converting ACT to SAT, I usually add 30 to 40 points to the SAT concordance. [Concordance study done by comparing ONE ACT sitting to ONE SAT sitting.]</p></li>
<li><p>as mentioned above, SAT is reported & part of USNews ranking, ACT is not (generally)…cynical view is that schools use only ACT scores for some of their (lower scoring) hooked candidates, and therefore do not include SAT scores for these folks in their reported numbers. [Check out Brown’s 25% ACT score…28!]</p></li>
<li><p>finally, all of the comparison between SAT & ACT is done with those pesky concordance tables. I find it interesting that if one plays around with the U Cal model inputing various SAT and ACT scenarios (remember, U Cal does not superscore SAT), the SAT equivalent of any particular ACT score always seems to be roughly 30-50 pts higher than the concordance tables would have you believe.</p></li>
</ul>