Can anyone tell me what is the difference between a ACT and a SAT test.?

Question

My son will be graduating this year and I would just like to find out which test he needs to get into a college ???

Answer 1

The ACT seems to be a more cummulative test of what students learn in high school. The SAT tests how well you understand the passages, questions, and vocabulary.

Your son should check with the college to see what test they accept.

Answer 2

The SAT tests you in reading, English, and math skills. Each section is about 25 minutes, with one being about 10 minutes, and having 20-30 questions, depending on what area it is. There are only about 20 math questions per section but 35 for English. It all adds up to 3 hours 45 minutes. You get one bathroom break and a couple stretch breaks. The SAT also requires a 25 minute essay. Each section (reading, math, writing) gets a score of 200-800 and your total is your overall score. A few years ago a new version of the SAT came out, adding the English section, making the total a 2400. But if you wanna calculate your score out of 1600, the old way, just leave out your English score.

The ACT is a bit shorter in duration but is more vigorous. There are just three sections, a 45 minute English section for 75 questions, a 60 minute section for 60 math questions, a reading section, and a science section, which tests your skills of analyzing scientific data and reading graphs, charts, etc. The ACT also includes an optional essay, but I recommend you take the essay if you want to take the ACT. The ACT requires you to work faster as compared to the SAT, but questions are generally easier. Each branch gets a score of 1-36 and your composite is sort of the average of all of them.

Oh, and women tend to do better on the ACT, since it leans more toward verbal and reading skills instead of math. But that's a generalization and may or may not apply to you.

I did better on the ACT (34) than the SAT (2180) but I plan to take the SAT again. If I were him I'd purchase a prep book for each test from a bookstore, and look through them, do a few practice problems to see which one he's more comfortable with. He could even take both tests, which would look good on his transcript. Personally I liked the SAT better because its short sections allows you to concentrate on the problems more instead of worrying about time and pacing.