SAT vs. ACT: Choose Wisely
Certification: Test Prep ACT - American College Testing
Passing standardized entrance exams are a requirement for admission in an undergraduate program in the universities in the United States. These standardised tests are aimed to assessing the academic readiness of the candidates for university or college level education. The most prominent and recognized standardised tests examining the college readiness of the students are ACT (American College Testing) and SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test). Both SAT and ACT are equally treated in terms of integrity and reliability in testing the academic readiness of the students by the colleges and universities for their admission process for undergraduate programs.
Choosing between these two equally accepted standardised test by colleges is often a concern among the high school students. Both tests are taken by national as well as international students for admission into the universities in the United States and also in some countries with English as their medium of instruction. To know which test will be easier and can help a student in achieving higher scores, it is important for them to know about ACT and SAT in detail.
About ACT
ACT (American College Testing) is among the most recognized entrance exams in these universities. The ACT test consists of four sections including Mathematics, Science Reasoning, English, Reading and an optional Writing section. The test comprises of multiple choice questions and a prompt question for the optional Writing section.
The test is completely based on the high school curriculum and is effectively designed to assess the proficiency of the students in the high school education through examining their knowledge across these four subject areas. While the Mathematics section evaluates their mathematical skills of the students, the Science and Reasoning section assesses their skills to analyse, reason and solve problems relating to natural sciences. The English section measures the proficiency of the students in verbal English and written English with the comprehending ability being examined separately in the Reading section. The Writing section is optional as only some colleges demand a writing section score for their application selection process. The section evaluates the level of writing of the students for university level education. This Writing section is taken only by students who apply for colleges which require a writing test score.
About SAT
SAT, administered by the College Board, tests the students in three subject areas including reading, writing and mathematics. Along with the standardised test, the board also offers students with 20 SAT Subject Tests in which can be broadly classified into five subject areas including language, English, mathematics, science and history.
The Critical Reading section includes reading passage and sentence completion questions to examine the skills of the students in reasoning and interfacing, determining word meanings, ability to understand tone of a text using vocabulary clues, and knowledge of text types. The Mathematics section includes questions relating to topics such as algebra, statistics, arithmetic operations, probability and statistics to test the knowledge of the students in numbers and operations, algebra and functions, geometry and measurements, data, statistics and probability, problem solving skills, using representations (tabular and pictorial) to identify answers, reasoning skills, establishing connections between numbers, operations and data analysis, and use of mathematical notations and terms. The writing section includes multiple choice questions on determining errors and improving grammar and its usage to examine the students in their skills in managing choice of words, grammatical relation between words, managing grammatical structure for comparison and modification, managing clauses and phrases in a sentence, and ability to identify correctly formed sentences.
The uniqueness of SAT is that they offer an option of taking individual subject tests to establish their interests and proficiency in it. The SAT Subject Tests are a platform for students to take up test in specific subjects in which they are good to showcase their achievement to the colleges. These content based tests are a great way for students to set their applications apart from the other applicants and showcase their readiness to take up programs with these subjects as majors. The scores of the SAT Subject Tests supplement the other application documents including high school grades, SAT scores etc. The Subject Test scores are an efficient tool for colleges to place students into appropriate courses that are best suited for them.
ACT vs SAT: How to make a choice?
Bothe ACT and SAT tests are taken up by students nationally as well as internationally to apply for colleges and universities. Making a choice on which of the two should be taken to apply for colleges completely depends on the skills and abilities of a student. For example, students who are more proficient in answering direct questions relating to the high school curriculum are more likely to score better by taking up ACT as SAT includes questions which require critical thinking and reasoning.
Students with less comfortable with taking up an entrance test in science subject or proficient with English should prefer SAT over ACT. These students will be able to score more on SAT as it does not include science in the testing subject areas unlike in ACT in which Science Reasoning is one of the test sections. Similarly, students better at science than English and wanting to pursue higher education and a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field have better prospects of scoring more and getting admissions by choosing the ACT test.
Writing section in SAT is a part of the standardised test whereas in ACT the Writing section is optional. The score of this section is included in the SAT score but as the section is optional in ACT the score are shown separately and not included in the composite scores. ACT has another advantage for students in terms of score reports as most colleges consider scores of every section score in the SAT scores; however, in case of ACT scores mostly only the composite score is considered for the admission process. Thus, an ACT score helps a student to create better impressions with the admission officers even if one of the section scores not very good.