<p>Hello, i’m a rising junior, and i am looking to be recruited to run at some of the ivies (yale or dartmouth hopefully). i have a 4.0 uw gpa in honors classes and ive been prepping for the SAT, but scored poorly on practice CR and writing sections i took at home.(580,550) this has gotten me pretty sad/irritated and has somewhat lowered my confidence 
Maybe the ACT is the test for me? however i am not a a very quick tester, and i hear that would be a problem on the ACT. Any help with my situation, or advice is appreciated. (my goal is a 30 or 31+) what do you think?</p>
<p>Conventional wisdom is that the ACT is generally more literal and more straightforward, less tricky than the SAT. Although people CAN learn how to do better on the SAT, my impression is that the CR section is a lot harder to raise with prep than the Math, and you do have quite a ways to go to be recruitable for running, I think. The recruited runners I happen to know at D all had pretty good stats, I think. One was even a Presidential Scholar nominee, which means he was among the top 20 on the SAT in our state that year. It is probably true that the better the athlete, the lower the stats can be, but there are limits. </p>
<p>Why don’t you take an ACT practice test online and see how you do?</p>
<p>I bought the Princeton Review book “Cracking the ACT 2011”, so i think i will learn a lot of valuable info there… and see how i do on one of the practice tests. What do you mean by the ACT being straightforward? does that only apply to math? and do you know anything about the math section in general/advice on it?
thanks</p>
<p>I never took the ACT, and neither did my kid, so my knowledge of it is very limited. I can only pass on what “people say.” People say that the ACT is more knowledge-based than the SAT (with the exception of vocabulary, perhaps), and that there are fewer tricky questions. The science section reportedly doesn’t actually require much factual knowledge of science; rather, an ability to read and interpret graphs. (Very bright kids in 6th grade who haven’t had any real science courses have been known to do quite well on it for this reason.) The other thing is that the ACT does not penalize you for wrong answers, while the SAT does.</p>
<p>There is a standardized testing sub-forum here at CC. Maybe you should go take a look at it for more info.</p>
<p>BTW, there was a former poster here whose kid was a recruited football player with an ACT of 29. But “football” may be the crucial part of that story.</p>
<p>Thank you, im starting to feel like the ACT will suit me better. i hope i can achieve that 31+</p>
<p>^^Correct on the lower score for athletes. A neighbor was recruited for soccer and was told that she just needed an 1800.</p>