Who makes the ACT-SAT conversion?

ACT4
Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:10:27 +0000

Here’s an empirical approach to see how schools equate ACT to SAT. For schools that report middle 50% scores for both ACT and SAT, I took a given schools 25th percentile ACT score and compared it to their 25th percentile SAT score (CR + M). I then repeated this for the given 75th percentile scores. This was done for 150 of the top schools that report both sets of scores. I then averaged the SAT scores for each level of ACT score. The results are as follows:

ACT/ Empirical SAT Equivalent / Concordance Table SAT Equivalent/ Diff
34 1560 1520 +40
33 1515 1470 +45
32 1470 1420 +50
31 1425 1380 +45
30 1380 1340 +40
29 1340 1300 +40
28 1305 1260 +45
27 1250 1220 +30
26 1210 1180 +30
25 1175 1140 +35
24 1135 1110 +25

This approach shows results more similar to using percentile equivalents than the old concordance table suggests. In both cases, ACT scores compare more favorably to SAT scores than implied by the old concordance table, which seems to be the standard that so many use.

Perhaps it’s time to calculate a new concordance table.