Those Who Can

What's the difference between the ACT and the SAT?

October 2, 2007

by Cal Lanier

Historically, the ACT was the test for the Midwest and South, and the SAT was the test for the coasts. That situation is changing. The ACT has seen an uptick in testers over the last couple years as more students learn that both tests are accepted at almost all major universities.

They usually haven't learned that from their high school counselors. I've seen at least 25 emails, forwarded by students (except the one I got from my son's assigned incompetent), in which the tenured employees of some of the Bay Area's best public and private schools tell them cheerfully that the University of California/fill in your campus of choice doesn't take the ACT. Which brings up a point: do not ever trust a high school counselor.

Test Content

The ACT tests the same general fact base as the SAT. It has four sections:

• English: 45 minutes, 5 passages of 15 questions.
• Math: 60 minutes, 60 questions.
• Reading: 35 minutes, 4 passages of 10 questions.
• Science Reasoning: 35 minutes, 7 passages of 4-8 questions (40 total).
  

Each section is scored on a scale of 1-36. The sections are then averaged for a Composite score.

How do you convert ACT scores to SAT?

The University of California conversion chart is biased towards the SAT, but it's the only one available--and even with its bias, students can pick up a lot of points on the conversion if their preference is strong.

Roughly, a 20 on any section is the equivalent of a 500 on the SAT, a 25 is a 600, and a 30 a 700.

The UC conversion adds two-thirds of the math/reading/sci reas total to the English/writing combined score. This weights the converted score towards English--rather unfairly, in my view, but not enough to do serious damage.

Is there any difference between the SAT and the ACT?

Yes, and some groups of students have a strong preference for one or the other. The SAT is notoriously abstract. A good deal of its difficulty is front-loaded--a big challenge in many questions is simply figuring out what the question is. The ACT actually tests more material, but its questions are considerably more straightforward.

Any student who prefers the concrete to the abstract should consider the ACT. Almost all students in the first and second testing quartiles will have a preference for the concrete and thus probably do much better on the ACT than the SAT.

Another group that should consider the ACT are students with SAT scores in the high 600s/low 700s. The new SAT reduced the number of questions in each section by at least 10%. This can be very hard on students who would previously have been mid-low 700 scores. Many students in this range will give away a few points on unforced errors, but make up the difference on the many difficult problems they answer correctly. Since the new SAT reduces the number of difficult problems and deducts for missed answers, they end up with scores in the high 600s instead. (I am nearly certain that the reduced number of questions caused the decline in the new SAT scores.)

The ACT has far more questions than the SAT--215 to 171--and has no "guessing penalty", which gives high ability students who make the occasional unforced error a significant advantage. To give an example: my son took the old SAT as an early junior and got 690 M, 660 V. I expected him to get high 600s, low 700s on the new one, which he took in March 2005. He received 630s across the board. After working on his accuracy, he took it again and received a 690,690, 670, or 2050.

While I wouldn't have originally thought of him as an ACT candidate, I had him take the test as a backup. The first time through, he messed up the timing on science reasoning, but his other scores were far higher than his SAT equivalents. His scores the second time were 34 E, 34 M, 36 R, 29 S. Using the UC conversion--which unfairly sets a 34 to a 760--his converted score was 2250.

Who Shouldn't Take the ACT?

The ACT is reading intensive--three of the four tests involve reading comprehension and two of those sections have brutal time requirements. Students whose reading skills are significantly out of alignment with their other abilities (e.g., dyslexia, reading LDs), may want to stick with the SAT.

Which is more closely aligned to school curriculum?

Both of them test knowledge and abilities that students should have mastered in school. However, the abstract nature of the SAT is difficult for some students and so instruction time focuses both on content and test question strategy. The weaker the student's math and reading skills, the more help he needs learning how to decode the questions and avoid the traps, which usually involves ignoring his initial instincts. A critical part of preparing students for a test is instilling confidence both in their own abilities and the test. Students with weaker math and reading skills usually distrust their own abilities and tests. It's difficult--and justifiably so--to convince these students that the test isn't trying to trick them, and more difficult to persuade them that they should trust their own instincts except in cases A, B, or C. Thus, the SAT isn't the best fit for these students.

ACT questions require little specific preparation, and students who aren't sure of their facts can trust their instincts to make reasonable guesses. While the ACT is commonly referred to as an achievement test, the science reasoning and reading sections require no domain specific knowledge; the student must read the passage or analyze the data in order to answer the question. The math and English sections do require knowledge of specific facts, but these facts are a basic part of any high school curriculum.

Thus, ACT test prep focuses heavily on content instruction, with content that overlaps to a high degree with high school geometry, algebra, and basic grammar facts. Students improve their scores on the reading and science reasoning sections by learning how to read more efficiently, understand textual organization, and retrieving facts from the text by using that organization.

While students at all ability levels are capable of improving their scores on either test, students with weaker abilities will receive more useful instruction by preparing for the ACT. I strongly recommend that students who speak English as a second language consider the ACT.

Is the ACT as long as the SAT?

The ACT is 20 minutes shorter than the SAT, and the fewer number of sections allows students to allocate their time among all questions more easily.

That said, the second half of the ACT is brutal and one of the few test-specific instruction issues for the ACT involves passage timing on the reading and science reasoning sections.