Which Do Colleges Want: SAT or ACT?

A question I get a lot is whether it’s better to submit SAT or ACT scores to colleges.

Right now a lot of colleges have test optional policies where if you don’t submit scores it’s not supposed to hurt your chance of admission. But if you have grade scores, sending those can help put your best foot forward and increase your chance of admission.

Then the question becomes which scores do colleges prefer, SAT or ACT? And the answer is, they don’t care… it doesn’t matter what state they’re in, what state you’re from or what your major is. To whatever extent colleges use these scores they just want to see the best version of you.

And because these tests are made by separate companies you only have to pay one of them to submit your better score. Now about 90% of colleges will super score the SAT — taking your best of each subject even from different days — but about 70% will super score your ACT.
So dig through each college’s website because, depending on their policies, you might send your ACT super score to these schools, but your SAT super score to those.

Either way, colleges can convert one to the other. And you can too with the concordance table linked in the description below.

So try out both tests, and just submit the scores you’re most proud of.

If you have questions, call us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.