Sent in both ACT and SAT scores

drusba
Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:49:38 +0000

They generally profess in that situation that they will use that test which they believe is the better for you to determine admission. One college, Rose-Hulman, superscores combined ACT and SAT tests. It uses only CR and math from SAT and math and Enghlish from ACT and if, for example, ACT math is better than SAT math but SAT CR is better than English ACT, it will use the SAT CR and the math ACT to determine admission. Not aware of other colleges that do that. UIUC, if you send multiple tests, uses that which it believes has the highest composite in determining admission but, after admission, for placement in the freshman writing (rhetoric) class, it uses the highest SAT CR or highest ACT English from any tests submitted. Believe some others do similarly but cannot recall names offhand.

Also, when scores are somewhat close to each other, you likely should not assume one is necessarily better than the other. You are relying on conversion tables you see on line but colleges do not necessarily rely on those in determining which is better and they may also weigh subscores higher than others, e.g., college may give little weight to SAT writing and if your SAT score is lower than ACT because of the writing score, the college may not agree with your belief as to which test is actually higher.