It’s no understatement to say that both tests—and the testing landscape itself—have changed DRAMATICALLY since I started tutoring students for the SAT and ACT a dozen years ago.
How is the SAT different now?
The SAT went through a complete overhaul in January 2016, changing up the format of ALL sections of the test and its scoring. We used to call it the “New SAT,” but now, it’s just “the SAT.”
In the past year, the SAT permanently dropped its optional Essay component AND discontinued SAT 2 Subject Tests.
What changes have been made to the ACT recently?
The ACT has made stealth changes more stealthily: switching up its essay format one year, adding a “Double Passage” in the Reading section another year, and altering the number of Science passages per section from seven to six (thus changing the distribution of which passage types weigh more heavily for your score).
The ACT was SUPPOSED to allow for something called Single-Section Retesting, but due to the pandemic, has postponed rolling it out and hasn’t promised a date yet.
In addition to internal changes to the test themselves, the testing landscape and college application process has also been changing over the last decade-plus.
Changes to how college applications treat standardized testing
If a college requires or considers standardized test scores, they have no preference between the SAT and ACT (this did NOT used to be the case several years ago!)
Fewer and fewer college require the essay on the SAT and ACT, to the point that the essays are either discontinued (SAT) or mostly pointless (ACT).
More and more colleges allow for Score Choice and Super Scoring.
More and more colleges have started using Super-Scoring for the ACT, not just for the SAT. And the ACT even has a new Superscore Report.
SAT 2 Subject Tests aren’t offered anymore (fewer and fewer colleges were requiring them, so the tests were discontinued this past January).
To lock in your National Merit Scholar status, you used to have to “validate” your PSAT score with a real SAT…but in recent years, the PSAT-NMSQT allows validation from an ACT as well.
During the pandemic, many colleges became Test Optional or even Test Blind…though most of the ones that made these changes during the pandemic did so only temporarily (e.g. for the classes of 2021 and 2022 only, etc.)
Phew! That’s a LOT of changes. And with each of those changes, the decision-making calculus of how to choose between the SAT and ACT has transformed with it. Now, it’s actually become a LOT more straightforward, which is fantastic for YOU!
Thus, the purpose of THIS 2022-and-beyond-specific post is to clear the slate of eeeeeverything you thought you knew and concluded about whether the SAT or ACT is for you. Because some of those conclusion might be based in old news—like info from when your older sibling or classmates took the SAT or ACT, or (if you’re a parent) from when your older son or daughter chose his or her test, or from what it was like when YOU took the test. Now that we’ve updated our understanding of the testing landscape, let’s decide once and for all: should I take the SAT or the ACT?
Do Colleges Prefer the SAT or the ACT?
From a college’s perspective, the SAT and the ACT are different flavors of the same basic thing. These days, colleges don’t “prefer” one over the other or take one more seriously than the other. The SAT and the ACT are like Visa and Mastercard: if you’re buying a jacket at a store, the store doesn’t care which one you hand them…so long as the charge is approved! And the store won’t require you to charge both your Visa AND your Mastercard: that would be double-paying! It only needs ONE, and it just has to WORK for your purposes.
It’s the same way with the SAT and the ACT: colleges don’t care which one you submit. They only care about how strong your score is. And luckily, we have concordance charts that place equivalent SAT and ACT scores side by side so we can compare them “apples to apples.”
So now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the question at hand:
In 2022, Should I Take the SAT or the ACT?
To decide this, there are now only three significant factors you will have to think about, two of which are fairly straightforward to determine. One or both of those factors might decide which test to take FOR you. And if they don’t? Then you’ll just move on to the next section in this article and compare your ACT vs. SAT practice test scores, which I’ll show you how to do.
1. Extra time and accommodations for the SAT/ACT
If you have a documented visual impairment, psychiatric disorder, or learning difference such as dyslexia, Autism, or ADHD, having more time to process test questions and think about the right answer could boost your score tremendously.
To promote fairness for students with disabilities, the SAT and ACT both provide special accommodations to ensure you’re not at an unfair disadvantage.
The thing is, either testing board can deny your request for special accommodations, though you can appeal their decision. I've had students who've had their accommodations approved by both...and also students who got their extended time with one test but NOT with the other.
If the latter happens to YOU, you will most likely need to go with the test that gives you the time and/or accommodations you need. Basically, they made the "SAT or ACT?" decision FOR you!
For instance, if the ACT denies you special accommodations, but the SAT approves them for you, it’s a clear choice which test you’ll be taking (the SAT in this instance).
2. Do the colleges I’m applying to Superscore? And if so, for which test(s)?
Another consideration that might make the decision FOR you is if the colleges on your college list allow for Superscoring…and if they allow it for BOTH tests, or only for one.
For instance, if ALL the colleges on your list allow you to submit a Superscore for EITHER the SAT or the ACT, then this is a moot point for you: move on to #3 below.
However, what if you research your college list and you find that several of your schools DO allow for Superscoring…for the SAT. However, when you look up their ACT test policies, basically NONE of them will Superscore for that test.
Well, this is a greyscale situation. Perhaps you’re so much naturally better at the ACT than the SAT that you’d still get a higher score—even if it’s NOT Superscored—than you would if you took the SAT and DID Superscore.
However, that’s usually not the case for most of the students I’ve seen. *Usually,* if they have considerably more colleges that Superscore for one test over the other, going with that test will boost their overall score more in the end.
What if neither of those apply to me?
However, there’s a strong chance that neither of these situations will move the needle for YOU and your “SAT or ACT?” conundrum. For you, it’s a matter of performance, pure and simple. In other words, for you, which grouping of 4 multiple choice sections will YOU score better on, the SAT’s or the ACT’s?
3. How to figure out which test you’ll score better on
Now, at this juncture, we could start talking ALL we want about the tests, comparing and contrasting and pontificating about the pros and cons, but most of it won't give you your answer about which test to ultimately start prepping for. Nope! Instead, I want you to do the following in order to determine which test you should take:
Mark two Saturdays on your calendar for practice ACT and SAT tests.
See, in order to accurately predict which test you’ll feel more comfortable taking, you need to put yourself in true testing conditions to see how you react. We can talk theory all we want, but until you actually TRY OUT the SAT and the ACT, you won't really know which test is better for you.
So wake up early one Saturday morning, get dressed as if you were going to take the ACT, and go to a quiet room in your home. Get rid of all distractions: no TV, cell phone, not even soft music.
You’ll need a real, past ACT practice test sans writing section (which you can find here) and a timer on hand. Work your way through each section and jot down notes about how you feel during each break.
When you’re done with the whole test, grade your answers and write down your composite score.
Repeat this process the following Saturday with a real College Board SAT practice test. Not only will you get to go through the paces of the SAT from start to finish, but now you’ll also have two scores to compare.
To compare your practice ACT composite score to your practice SAT score, check online (the College Board website is best) to find an ACT to SAT score converter. This will make it much easier to see the difference in how you did.
Let’s say you scored a 1340 on your practice SAT, and a 33 on the ACT practice test. Using an online calculator to convert that 33, you actually scored between a 1440–1480 in SAT numbers.
Now it’s easy to see that your ACT score, even on the low end of 1440, is still 100 points higher than your SAT score.
So barring the special circumstances I mentioned in numbers 1 and 2 above, in this particular case, you should clearly go with the ACT.
See how simple that could be?
However, I do understand that sometimes the answers aren't so clear-cut.
Sometimes, your scores are very close. Or maybe one test's score is higher than the other, but the REASON behind that difference is something completely solvable...or maybe it's NOT solvable!
As an elite test prep expert who's been helping students in six different continents reach their target scores for a dozen years now, I know these tests inside and out. I know that not every missed question has the same weight. Some missed questions can be easily fixed by learning a concept or a strategy or doing some more practice...while other mistakes just can't be tutored away!
That’s where I come in. I can look at your bubble sheets and tell you EXACTLY why you missed the questions you did...and more importantly, tell you exactly which things to learn to gain the most points in the least amount of time. AND I can tell you which test you can ultimately improve the most, regardless of your starting scores!
This is EXACTLY what I do with my students when we have our first Zoom meeting, called an Ace the Test: Game Plan™. The student and parent(s) come prepared with their diagnostic SAT and ACT tests and a preliminary list of colleges they're interested in, and I figure out everything else:
which test fits their strengths the best,
what their target scores should be,
how many times they should take the test,
what their testing timeline should be, and
exactly which concepts and strategies will get them their target scores in the least amount of effort and time possible!
I know I can do the same for you. Reach out to me to book your Ace the Test: Game Plan™ so that I can help you get into the school of your dreams.
