ACT

Homework, projects, tests, and extracurricular are enough to put a student to bed rest. Yet, students have an additional test to study for if they plant to ever step foot onto a college campus.
After taking both exams, I would choose to take the American College Test over the Scholastic Aptitude Test, any day.
For one, the ACT does not penalize students for guessing on questions they are unsure of. The SAT awards one point for every correct answer, but subtracts a quarter of a point from the awarded points. After taking SAT prep classes, teachers always told me that it is better not to guess on the questions you have no absolute clue what the answer is, but for the ACT it is only to your advantage to guess on every single question. The ACT scoring system allows you to get additional points you most likely wouldn’t have gotten on the SAT. Both tests do not penalize students for omitting questions.
The ACT takes the pressure off of switching mental gears from subject to subject. Compared to the 10-section SAT exam, the ACT only has four sections with an optional writing portion. The frequent subject changes on the SAT alone are enough to tire a student out. After finishing a portion on the ACT exam, there is no anxiety for upcoming portions of the same subject.
In my opinion the ACT questions are more straightforward than the SAT.
The SAT has a stronger emphasis on vocabulary than the ACT. The SAT is a giant vocabulary test, with many questions containing words you’ve never even heard of. It’s as if College Board expects students to read the dictionary in their free time. Words like garrulous, legerdemain, and maelstrom do not appear in the books we’ve read in school but they are on the vocab list for the SAT. Granted we should be learning new vocabulary through the books we read in school and in our personal books, but these words just don’t appear enough to be remembered.
The ACT has an additional 35-minute science section that the SAT does not have. Although this may seem problematic, it is not. No knowledge is needed from previous science courses you have taken to do well on this section of the test. You just need good reasoning and reading skills to answer the questions in this section.
The ACT covers more advanced math concepts we have learned in algebra I and II, and geometry. Since we were all required to take these courses, the exam only tests us on our ability to apply ourselves to the problems they give us.
Colleges tend to look at the composite score of the exam. Since the ACT tests you on majority of the subjects we have learned in school, aside from history – this could be a good or bad thing. If you tend to do worse on one subject you can make it up with higher scores in the other subjects. Unlike the SAT which college admission officers tend to look at each section of the exam according to the Princeton Review.
With two exams that determine college readiness, the ACT will always be the better choice for me.

SAT

Many sophomores and juniors are busy in the bustle of school life and trying to determine what in all things holy they’re going to do after high school.
Many of those students are also gearing to take either the SAT or ACT standardized tests, both very challenging, one more beneficial than the other.
I’m here to help clear some things up with the SAT and how it’s better than the ACT, starting with the fact that these two tests are some of the first things colleges look at.
On the SAT, the content areas (Critical Reading, Math and Writing) are broken up into 10 sections, with the required essay at the beginning. You do a little math, a little writing, a little critical reading, a little more math, etc.
This mixes things up, giving you the upper edge on your counterparts taking the ACT by keeping you on top of things and ready to access the data in your head at a moment’s notice, just like the real world.
The SAT questions tend to be more challenging and in depth as opposed to the mainly straightforward ACT questions. Now do you want to be a deep thinker or a hey, do you think you should wear lab goggles around acidic chemicals.
The SAT also focuses a lot more on vocabulary, now you may not want to remember all of those useless and boring words, but employers and colleges will be very impressed if you are able to use your plethora of knowledge in a real world application.
People often say you have to memorize countless vocabulary words to get ready for the SAT and in a way you do, while in another way you don’t. If you actually study and know how to use the English language, using the context clues really isn’t that hard, it just takes a bit of practice and you can differ a paradox from an anomaly.
Most of your peers will be taking the SAT and quite a handful will also take the ACT, but the SAT compares more students than the ACT giving you the upper hand if you actually studied and scored high on your test.
This way colleges will be able to easily compare you to your peers and pick out the “winner” based on that score and a few other important things like grades, AP classes, and extra-curricular activities.
Let’s just say you have a brilliant Nicolai Tesla and an average Joe. Joe might want to take the ACT because the fact is, it’s easier, while Nicolai would take the SAT and really challenge his skills.
To put in perspective, the ACT is the love child of the SAT and the TAKS, and we all remember what a joke that was. “Write about a time you were sad” is not something colleges are going to be looking at very distinctly.
Now it’s not that colleges prefer one test over the other, but they’d be much more impressed if you got a high score on the SAT as opposed to the competency test.
So if it comes down to it, the SAT is better than the ACT and you if you go for the best grade you can get on it, you’re lining yourself up on the path to college.