Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment A tale of two tests: SAT&ACT

Can someone share their knowledge about the ACT versus the SAT? Here's what happened:

DS took the ACT in mid-grade 6 when he was 11, and had a
26 composite, 84%ile of high schoolers, 96%ile of Numats 6th-graders.
He took it again this year as a HS freshman, had a
34 composite, 99%ile of high schoolers and Numats freshmen.
So that's all fine. He also just took the SAT, and had a
1310 combined math/critical reading, 89%ile of high schoolers and 87%ile of Numats freshmen.

He thought that the SAT was so easy, but this score does not reflect that! He typically scores in the 99%ile on CoGat and our state assessments and 94-99%ile on the NWEA MAP, was subject-accelerated to 4th-grade math as a 1st grader, and was in our district replacement LA and Math classes through 8th grade. While chronologically a freshman, he is taking mostly soph honors classes.

It seems that this score difference is far more than the "different day" score difference one might see, and certainly doesn't jibe with act/sat conversion charts. Are the two tests that different, that a highly abstract thinker would not score as high? Or are they scored so differently? Or is the SAT more high school curriculum based than the ACT?

To be clear, I'm not asking how he can raise his score, he did not "prep" for any of the tests beyond taking one sample test each, spread out over a few weekends. In fact, before the SAT he practiced only 2 sample sections. I just wonder what might be behind this great variance.

Does anyone have experience with such SAT/ACT score comparisons?

No idea about systematic score comparisons, but my DS also thought SAT was really easy and ACT was much harder (but he scored really well on ACT as well). The way I see it (by looking at old tests) is that SAT is easier to prep.

DD took both-- SAT at 13, and ACT just after turning 14, six months later. Because of her acceleration, she did this between junior and senior years in high school, however.

Her scores on them both were (overall) 99th percentile, but she found the format of the ACT much MUCH easier.

The SAT? It was too much down time, too often. It really put her off her game to have it so choppy-- the short sections were awful.

One thing worth noting is that her practice scores for the ACT were about what they were for the real thing, and with the SAT, her practice scores were at the ceilings, and the real thing was 50-60 points below practice scores. In the case of the math sections, that meant a sub-700 score for her, which is mind-boggling given what I know of her math ability.

ACT, much better reflection of her abilities.

I had always heard that the SAT was a better for abstract thinkers and ACT better at testing knowledge. Not sure if that is true our school recommends students at least try a sample of both before deciding. My daughter took the ACT and I always assumed my son would do better on the SAT. (Not sure because of the upcoming changes.) But I have never had DS15 take either test yet. The SAT currently penalizes for guessing could that maybe have effected your sons score. Perhaps the problems he did get wrong lost him points?

When I was in school I often did poorer on test that I thought easy. I would get lazy and make more mistakes.

I wondered about the choppiness. Each section was 25 minutes, and DS said he finished in 15 leaving lots of down time...

We found the ACT practice scores were good predictors of the real thing, too, but he didn't take enough of the SAT practice test to predict. We weren't really into the prep thing, just wanted a feel for the test before taking it.

Are you supposed to approach the SAT differently?

Honestly? I have no idea. That's what DD did to 'prepare' for them both. Mostly, for DD, this amounted to finding her "ideal" pace-- and for figuring out a strategy for the math sections to reduce errors in computation, which are the bane of her existence.



DD thought that the SAT math sections in particular were about "trick" questions. By that she means that prepping helps a TON with them, because you have to know the One Right Way of doing the problem-- there's no way to really leverage general math knowledge to do them a less efficient but still valid way. KWIM? Her impression was also that there were weird types of questions on the SAT just in general-- things that if you weren't prepped, you would have almost no shot at, just because you had to understand HOW you were supposed to interpret/see the test item.

The ACT, she definitely felt was less of a "prepping" fest.

The ACT was a matter of MUCH more significant pressure on reading speed, though. DD liked that-- it was much more like the AP test format. Less down time for DD, but she enjoyed it much more because she was able to get in the zone and stay there for longer.


Most students never even finish the sections in the ACT. DD had little time left OVER in the Science section, but the rest, she definitely had lots of time. Strategy-wise, she used that time in the math section to immediately begin working her way BACK through the test items until she ran out of time-- that meant that for the last 2/3rd of the section, she worked the problems twice. The other two sections, she worked them through at her ideal pace and then just waited.

This could be key, since what you are seeing are percentiles, how your DS performed relative to others. It's not an absolute measure of performance. So if lots of his peer group is successfully prepping for the SAT, that will artificially bring down his scores on that test.

My eldest took both her junior year. She did some prep for the SAT, but just took one practice ACT test to get an idea of the questions and timing.

Her SAT CR+M SAT score was equivalent to a 33, actual ACT was 32, and three part SAT was equivalent to a 31 (didn't like the writing section on the SAT). She thought the ACT was all stuff you should have learned in school, especially the math. Math is definitely her weak point, but her highest subscore of 35.

My 10th grader just took the SAT, just to "see her baseline score" (errr, why not prep?). Her three part score was 97th percentile, slightly higher than her sister's three part superscore. It will be interesting to see how she does on the ACT, because she is really good at standardized achievement tests. However, she is clearly more of an abstract thinker than her sister, so I can understand their SAT scores.

Some kids see a big difference in ACT and SAT scores, some don't. The good thing is that all colleges now accept either test, so he can just go with the ACT for college applications.

Bluemagic, funny you should say that about abstract vs knowledge. I really thought DS would do better on the SAT because his teachers describe him as a highly astract thinker. If, as Howlerkarma DD says, the SAT questions are tricky, could that throw even abstract thinkers for a loop, backfire on them in a way? And the ACT was funny because the science portion is more of a reading test than science knowledge, although you should certainly have some school science to approach it.

Maybe DS should have taken more of the practice test sections! Maybe he took the tests too close together, just a month apart, and he was influenced by the one, and maybe even feeling cocky? (He'd found errors in the ACT prep test answer guide, but not in the SAT parts he'd done, maybe that threw him?)

MegMeg, that's a good point about percentages and prep. Though he was 87% nationally, he was only 57% in our state! But ours is more of an ACT state, and we have lots of controlled-admission public and private college prep high schools with kids who want to go to the coasts for university and are prepping for the SAT. So the kids who take the SAT in our state have every reason to prep hard.