ACT or SAT

[Anonymous]

How do kids decide which one to take? Is there one that is better for a certain kind of student and another that's better for some other type?

[Anonymous]

Take a practice test of each an go with the better fit.

[Anonymous]

Most Start with SAT I think, explore ACT only if can’t score well with SAT

[Anonymous]

1. The SAT is reputed to have slightly more complex questions, with more time to answer each question, compared to the ACT, where the questions are more straightforward, but you get less time for each. If a student has extended time, perhaps the ACT then becomes easier.

2. The ACT has a science section. The SAT does not. It's sometimes hard to get a perfect score on it, as occasionally a question will presume prior knowledge that some non-STEM students might have forgotten. Most questions, however, do not assume prior knowledge and students are just asked to judge based on the evidence presented. There is no need to do the optional essay.

[Anonymous]

It's hard to tell until they've taken one of each. Some kids will score better on one vs the other (there are equivalence charts out there to help decide once you have one score from each one). Some kids will have a strong preference for one over the other. (Mine much preferred ACT).

If you have a strong test taker, who would be ready for testing at the end of the summer before junior year, the one benefit to taking SAT is that they can prepare that summer for the SAT and it will benefit both NMSQ-PSAT and SAT. But I wouldn't push this if your child isn't ready in that timeframe or if your child prefers ACT - it's just not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. The SAT is reputed to have slightly more complex questions, with more time to answer each question, compared to the ACT, where the questions are more straightforward, but you get less time for each. If a student has extended time, perhaps the ACT then becomes easier.

2. The ACT has a science section. The SAT does not. It's sometimes hard to get a perfect score on it, as occasionally a question will presume prior knowledge that some non-STEM students might have forgotten. Most questions, however, do not assume prior knowledge and students are just asked to judge based on the evidence presented. There is no need to do the optional essay.

According to my DC, the Science section is just another reading comprehension section, so if you are very strong in Verbal you are likely to do well on ACT.

ACT is definitely faster paced.

[Anonymous]

Most of them don't take it beginning of Jr year? rather in the spring?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of them don't take it beginning of Jr year? rather in the spring?

DD and most her friends took it early junior yr

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of them don't take it beginning of Jr year? rather in the spring?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of them don't take it beginning of Jr year? rather in the spring?

Some kids are really strong test takers and have progressed in courses to support taking at the beginning of JR year, get a great score and have it out of the way. I have one like this but I would NOT recommend anyone push this on their kid. It works for certain kids though.

[Anonymous]

What do the rest of them do? Study jr year and take it In the spring?

[Anonymous]

My kid took both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. The SAT is reputed to have slightly more complex questions, with more time to answer each question, compared to the ACT, where the questions are more straightforward, but you get less time for each. If a student has extended time, perhaps the ACT then becomes easier.

2. The ACT has a science section. The SAT does not. It's sometimes hard to get a perfect score on it, as occasionally a question will presume prior knowledge that some non-STEM students might have forgotten. Most questions, however, do not assume prior knowledge and students are just asked to judge based on the evidence presented. There is no need to do the optional essay.

According to my DC, the Science section is just another reading comprehension section, so if you are very strong in Verbal you are likely to do well on ACT.

ACT is definitely faster paced.

Agree. My DC is a fast reader and preferred the ACT. We got him a limited amount of tutoring (mostly to raise his math score) and they spent one session on science and DC subsequently got a perfect score on that section.

[Anonymous]

My son preferred the SAT. He's a strong tester in general but didn't like the ACT time pressure. Worth taking a practice test of each.

[Anonymous]

This is a hugely important question and the prior answers maybe don't emphasize enough how much this happens. The ACT is a much, much better test for kids who work fast and have stronger reading comprehension skills but are not math kids. (3/4 of the sections are really about reading comprehension/decoding.) The current system steers kids towards the SAT, so it might take 2-3 practice tests on the ACT to get a sense that they have a competitive advantage on it. FWIW, both my kids were strongly competitively advantaged on the ACT versus the SAT. My first kid did one-on-one SAT test prep for several months with absolutely no results, and was testing at the 80-85th percentile, and then we grasped this at the very last minute (test prep company sucked) and hit 99th percentile on the ACT, first and last time they took the ACT for real. Second kid had the advantage of this lesson learned. Was also about a 75th percentile SAT kid. Initial couple of ACT practice tests scored low because DC was unfamiliar with the format, but with the experience from DC #1 we felt confident predicting that DC2 also processed very quickly but maybe not so deeply and was much stronger on reading comprehension than math. Did targeted test prep for less than two months and also hit 99%th percentile on ACT. For both kids it was a game-changer in terms of college admissions.