How to Decide Between the SAT and the ACT The Princeton Review
These days, almost every U.S. college accepts both the SAT and ACT—some even require the
optional essay.
While there may be colleges that would be impressed if you submitted both, you won’t
be required to submit both.
Some schools won’t actually need to you to send either.
Nevertheless, there is value in taking one or both of these exams.
A high score can make you a more competitive candidate for admission—even at test-optional
schools—and it can also qualify you for merit scholarships.
If you decide you’re going to take one, you still need to make a choice: SAT or ACT?
ACT or SAT?
How do you decide?
Asking whether you should take the ACT or the SAT is like asking whether you should
bake an apple pie or a chocolate cake.
The decision comes down to two factors: personal preference and audience.
If you’ve been comfortably baking apple pies your whole life, now’s not the right
time to switch to chocolate cakes!
Here’s what I mean: There are 18 states that require you to take the ACT as a high
school test, and 10 (plus the District of Columbia) that require you to take the SAT.
If you’re living sunnily in Hawaii—lucky you!—it’s likely that you’ve already
been training in ACT skills, whereas if you’re freezing in Maine, you might have been buckling
down on SAT prep.
That said, if you’re dissatisfied with your current test performance, or if you’ve never
taken either one, then the best thing to do is to take a practice test of each type, and
then focus on the one you feel more comfortable with.
Of course, you should still know a little bit about both exams before you take either
one, even at the practice level.
I’m going to break it down here by test, but you can sort this into a pro/con list
for yourself as we compare features of each.
Both tests are roughly three hours in length, but the composition of those sections is drastically
different.
The ACT has nearly 40% more questions—there are 154 questions on the SAT, but a whopping
215 on the ACT.
That means that you have less time to answer each ACT question; for instance, on the SAT
reading section, you get about 70 seconds per question, but on the ACT, you get only
53 seconds.
Think fast, literally!
By the way, if you needed to use a calculator to follow along on any of that math, you might
want to consider the following.
The ACT lets you use a calculator for the whole 60-question math section, but the SAT
has a 20-question no-calculator section.
That said, the SAT gives you a formula sheet; the ACT does not.
Moreover, the multiple-choice math questions on the ACT have five options, whereas the
SAT has a more manageable four, which makes it somewhat easier to weed out the wrong answers
on the SAT so that you can pick the right one.
One other key difference between the tests is that the ACT has a science section.
If you can’t tell your RNA from your ATP, don’t worry!
This section is more about reading data in charts and figures than it is about having
previously memorized scientific concepts, but if you don’t like analysis, that might
be a strike against the ACT.
That’s a lot of raw data—so you can see why I started off by talking about apple pie
and chocolate cake!
Speaking of which, everything so far has been about personal skill and your preference for
one test type over another.
Let’s look at that other factor I mentioned: your audience.
Even if the college of your dreams accepts both test scores—or requires neither—you’ll
still want to find a way to stand out when you apply.
If you’re likely to get as high a score on the SAT as on the ACT, you might want to
think about which test your peers are likely to do worse on, because they’re the ones
you’re being compared to.
To put it another way, if everyone’s bringing chocolate cake to the party, your chocolate
cake has to be that much better.
Maybe it’s time to bring a delicious apple pie instead!
I hate to do this to you, but let’s break it down with a little more math.
In 2019, more than 2.2 million students took the SAT—and the average score dropped to
1059 (out of a total 1600).
By contrast, 1.8 million took the ACT, with 41% of students getting less than an 18 (out
of 36) on the English, and 61% scoring under a 22 (again, out of 36) on the math—that’s
an overall average of 20.7 (out of 36).
These averages are somewhat equivalent , but nearly 400,000 more students—that is, more
competition—took the SAT.
If you’ve got the math chops, the ACT’s smaller field might be the place for you to
shine.
(I should pause here to say that the ACT may once again become the more popular test, especially
with the changes coming in September 2020, but the principle still stands: sitting for
the lesser-taken test may offer you a slight edge.)
You might also want to consider location.
I mentioned earlier that some states require students in their high schools to take one
test or the other.
Since the majority of students attending public colleges head to colleges that are within
two hours of their home, you can somewhat predict what the most common test submitted
to that school is going to be.
This gives you the opportunity to stand out by taking the other one!
In the end, though, whether you go with the SAT or the ACT is going to come down to one
thing, and one thing only.
Personal taste.
Do yourself a favor—take a bite out of both tests, weigh the flavor of those pros and
cons we’ve spoken about so far, and pick the one that’ll be better for you.
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