<p>Modadunn, I think I am unsure about it all because it is just in recent years that students at the local high school have started to take the ACT in greater numbers. For instance, my other son graduated from high school in 2005, and at the time, the ACT was an option that many fewer student exercised. Most took the SAT, and some took both, and very few took just the ACT. Now, I am told, a much larger proportion of kids at the same school are taking both or just the ACT. What this means is that for a given college graphed on Naviance, it might show 70 SAT datapoints but just 8 ACT datapoints. I have more confidence in the larger sample. This will change in the years to come as the ACT becomes more mainstream here. I don’t know if this is elitism or just comfort level. True, NY is east coast and maybe 99% of parents who were raised on the east coast are more familiar and perhaps more comfortable with the SAT since that is what they grew up with. That is also changing.</p>
<p>The ACT subscores clearly assess a broader range of skills, and I found the difference in my son’s subscores from section to section to be quite interesting.</p>
<p>Good question. My son also did really well (or well enough for where he wants to go) on the December ACT and we are trying to figure out if he should take the SAT. Of course he doesn’t want to!!</p>
<p>Here’s a question - (and I’m sure you cc folks will know the answer) - He is signed up for the January SAT, but since he did so well on the ACT, is there any way that he can change from taking the regular SAT to a subject tests? Can you contact the college board and request that? He needs the math subject test for engineering, and I’m sure he’d like to get it out of the way and not take another 4 hour test again in his life!! lol!</p>
<p>I am from the East… and fully get the whole SAT vs ACT thing because I never took the ACT nor did hardly anyone I knew. I now, however have lived in the midwest for over 20 years and it’s true the ACT is much more prevalent. </p>
<p>However, while HR is clearly making a good point as it stands today, I think this whole conversation will evolve as time goes by and it might seem more in line with east coast based HR’s than midwest (since my brother works for Target and has a whole different take on recruiting from schools and what they look for). In any event, I do think it’s really ridiculous to hire anyone via consideration of an 8-10 year-old-on-one-day test score. I also think that as more elite schools accept EITHER the ACT or the SAT you are going to see that trickle up (or down) to HR as well or they’ll find themselves missing out on some of the best and brightest. And in thinking about it… if the SAT seems more relevant to something that comes AFTER undergraduate school, couldn’t someone – like my son who didn’t have perfect SATs but near perfect ACTs – take the SAT again in college if it seemed they needed it for grad school or hiring practices?</p>
<p>I just think, in my son’s case especially, his SAT I scores are not consistent with any other testing, his grades, his standing in the class and the classes he’s already taken. And I know other kids who because they have extended time across the board got straight up 800’s. And by their own admissions, it is a lot harder to get extended time with the ACT and many of those same students don’t take the ACT for that very reason. So to HR… I suggest they also might want to start considering the motivations/calculations for students taking one test over another</p>
I apologize! It does not. I checked the admissions site, and they said this was not true. I don’t know where I got that from. Glad it’s not the case.</p>
<p>Most universities use ACT/SAT conversion charts. There are two types of ACT conversions: either comparing ACT composite score to total SAT score, or comparing ACT scores with the 1600 M + CR SAT. These charts are easy to find online and the College Board has a chart on their site. You can ask admissions offices which conversion they use.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about this for future job applications. Your son can learn the conversion for his scores and write that number alongside the ACT score. Future employers will deal with this as the ACT continues to compete with the SAT.</p>
<p>I think you’ve been given good advice – no real reason to take the SAT I. Another try at the ACT if he has time and doesn’t balk. Is he a fast reader? They tend to do better on the ACT. Some kids end up with vastly different scores on these two tests. Our high school does recommend taking both. My daughter’s scores were identical on each, my son’s SAT scores were much, much higher than ACT.</p>
<p>This is one of the reasons that you show up to your testing site early. Your son simply tells the test center that he is taking the SATIIs. </p>
<p>You will be billed a test change fee of $22 by the college board. He will be able to take up to 3 subject test. The test price is $20 basic registration fee for the first test & $9 each additional test.</p>
<p>You’ve gotten some excellent advise here, and with all the information you have, it sounds like the next step is to sit down and have an ‘informational’ conversation with your son.</p>
<p>Remember, though, that kids can and do change their minds often during this time in their lives. He will overhear conversations at school as to what choices other kids have made, and those may plant a seed for future choices he makes, but it won’t be obvious now. I would say this applies to all issues relating to the college application and decision phase of their lives. What he decides is the best approach this month may change six months from now. Having all this information on hand is powerful, though.</p>
<p>“We were all surprised by this. Some of the investment banking internship applications requested the scores. The scores were mentioned during some of the interviews for post-graduate job positions.”</p>
<p>My good friend is in her second year of an MBA at a top-10 business school. She graduated from a highly ranked university in 1998. She took the SAT as a high school junior in 1993. She was asked about her scores during management-consulting interviews last season, a full fifteen years later.</p>
<p>Not to say that OP needs to take them. But they really can come up many years later.</p>
<p>I read something (probably from the ACT people but i can’t put my finger on it) that said there is now not one college in the U.S. that requires an SAT instead of an ACT for admission. Which is good. College Board should not have had a monopoly on this.</p>
<p>I suppose you could take an SAT after you’ve been accepted to the college you’ll be attending if you just want to have one on file for future internships but don’t want to risk mixing a potentially lower SAT I score in with a great SAT II scores (and a great ACT).</p>
<p>I checked with my son’s counselor and he agreed, so I cancelled the SAT test and set up the Math SAT2 test. My son is thrilled! It’s one hour vrs 4 miserable hours.</p>
<p>By the time he will be seeking employment, there will probably be enough kids who are only taking the ACT that there will be some level of familiarity with employers. He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.</p>
<p>“Eagle – A 34 is a great score.A 35 or a 36 is a better score. Applicants to top schools need every possible advantage. For a student aiming high, doing a few hours of additional prep and spending another morning taking the ACT is a relatively modest and worthwhile investment.”
Exactly!</p>
Colleges look at SAT scores in context of the school where the student is coming from. Most high school probably report their average score range on their profile submitted with the transcripts. </p>
<p>Which is probably why my daughter’s 28 ACT was good enough to get into multiple colleges where that number was at the 25% mark or below for the school.</p>