Now that summer’s well underway, it’s time for rising juniors and seniors to take a serious look at preparing for standardized tests. But before students put their noses to the grindstone, there’s an important question to answer: which test?
Science and section weighting
The ACT and SAT have three sections in common — math, reading, and grammar, which the ACT calls English and the SAT writing. But the ACT also has a fourth section, the science, which tests students’ ability to interpret data and understand the scientific method. The SAT has tried to incorporate these skills into the math and reading sections through a few scattered data interpretation questions, but they’ve still stuck to their traditional split of math and reading/writing.
Consequently, the two tests have meaningfully different weighting: whereas the SAT weighs math 50% and reading and grammar roughly 25% each, the ACT weighs math, reading, grammar, and science 25% each. With STEM in mind, you might expect a connection between the science and the math, but in my experience teaching the ACT, I’ve seen a much stronger correlation with students’ reading and science scores. After all, the science section isn’t a content test. Like the ACT’s reading section, the science presents students with short passages, then asks questions that probe their structural understanding — the only difference is that much of the information on the science is contained in tables and graphs.
So, whereas the SAT is half math and a quarter reading, the ACT is functionally half reading and a quarter math. If a student preparing for the SAT is doing relatively poorly on the math, then, they should give the ACT serious consideration, and vice versa.
Timing and passages versus paragraphs
The second major difference between the tests is how they use their time limits. The SAT gives students about two-thirds more time per question, which sounds like a good thing until you realize that this means the SAT has room to make trickier, more complex questions. In contrast, the ACT has slightly more straightforward questions, but uses its time limits as a meaningful constraint. The ACT is actually designed for students to barely have enough time, which can be uncomfortable for students used to finishing school tests with plenty of time to spare. Especially on the reading and science, which are based on page-long passages, it’s easy for students to get bogged down sifting through passages for details. The SAT, on the other hand, has moved away from passages in favor of individual paragraphs for each question on the reading and grammar. So, while individual questions on the SAT may be trickier, students shouldn’t generally run the risk of getting stuck on a particularly tough passage and running out of time.
It’s okay to switch!
Besides the science section and the timing differences, the fundamental content on both tests is very similar. There are differences — the SAT moving away from passages means that they can’t test students’ ability to recall or search for details, for instance. But any studying test-takers do on content and problem solving for the math and grammar should carry over nicely. That means that if students find themselves in a rut preparing for one test, they should seriously consider the other without worrying about having wasted their time — sometimes the grass is actually greener!
Teachability and logistics
One final consideration is the extent to which each test is “teachable.” Just this past year, College Board has redesigned the SAT’s entire format as part of a move to digital testing — and that’s after a redesign last decade to ape the ACT, which had been eating into the SAT’s market share. That means that whereas practice tests and other materials for the SAT are sparse and often speculative, there’s an almost endless supply of real ACTs for students to use for practice. On top of that, the ACT being generally more predictable and more straightforward means that it’s generally a more teachable test for students with lower scores looking to make big gains.
With all that said, many students don’t actually get a choice between the two tests. Many high schools offer free SATs or ACTs to their students in the fall and spring. And as availability of testing centers gets more and more constrained, sometimes those school-provided tests are the only opportunities students get to take a standardized test. If that’s the case, students shouldn’t panic — while there are meaningful differences between the ACT and SAT, the test that students take is less important than all the work they put into their preparation.
