Don't Write off the ACT!

When Junior year rolls around, the stress truly begins in the heads and hearts of 16 year olds across the nation as they realize it's time to take the SAT.

I was one of the fortunate ones - one of the last classes to take the old SAT test as a high school graduate in '04. I say fortunate deliberately as the New SAT sent a well established tradition of predicting college success since the 1930s completely topsy turvy.

As you surely know by now, changes such as removing the analogies section and adding the writing section changed the way many people looked at the SAT. I can remember doing analogy lessons since I started learning vocabulary words - surely the SAT analogy section had something to do with that.

Not to mention one of the biggest complaints about the New SAT - the excessive length of almost 4 hours. Among graduate standardized tests, including the LSAT, the GRE, the GMAT and the MCAT, the MCAT is the only one that is longer. In my four years of college at the University of Southern California, I've never had a 4 hour exam.

I doubt that testing a student's mental abilities under fatigue is at all relevant to determining their future success.

Therefore the ACT is becoming more noticed by students, parents, and even universities who are increasingly opening up their applications to students who have only taken the ACT.

I think this is great news, since I find that students who are better at English and the social sciences show better scores with the ACT than the SAT. I certainly did. The New ACT pains me even more since the analogies were actually one of the sections that inflated my SAT score. With that section removed and tougher math questions, the New SAT may be much more difficult for students who aren't particularly great at math.

And I still don't see how a subjectively graded pressurized essay that many students hardly have time to finish within 25 minutes should realistically be 1/3 of the total SAT score. I especially doubt that this even benefits students who are good at writing, since any substantive in class essay I've ever written in college (both in GEs and English classes) has taken at least an hour.

TAKE THE ACT (ALSO)
Although my bias is clear by now, I urge you to consider taking the ACT. The ACT takes to heart that less is truly more. This is evident through the streamlined score range of 1-36 as opposed to the New SAT's 600-2400.

In addition, you have a better chance of doing better on the ACT since the standards are more familiar to those teaching the it and to companies who make books for it. Even though I am sure companies have worked hard to adapt to the New SAT, a few years of adaptation is not enough to find methods to elicit the best possible scores. And the ACT is less expensive!

So if you look at the list of schools that you want to apply to and find that they don't require the SAT, go for the ACT! Or at least take both, because you may find that you do better on one test than the other and have the option of submitting only the better set of scores.

I know it's hard, but Happy testing!

References: Can the ACT Take Down the SAT? on MSNBC.com with Newsweek
Length of New SAT is Biggest Complaing Among First Time test Takers