The ACT is the most frequently taken test by prospective college students, the SAT coming in second. To help write this blog, I relied on a list from princetonreview.com that compared the two. I stumbled upon it and thought that it was interesting so I decided to share it. Below I wrote a condensed form of the list.
The biggest reason to take either of these tests depends on which colleges you want to go to. The ACT is required by almost any college that a student applies to. The SAT however, is only required by about one hundred in the United States. There are about seven key differences between the two tests.
1) The questions on the ACT tend to be a lot more straightforward than the questions on the SAT. The questions on the SAT are generally harder to understand and take a lot more time to figure out what they are asking. Here are two examples given by the Princeton Review;
“SAT: What is in your view of the claim that something unsuccessful can still have some value?”
“ACT: In your view, should high schools be more tolerant of cheating?”
2) The SAT focuses a lot more on vocabulary than the ACT and includes a lot more challenging words. It also has a section that actually tests vocabulary
Ex:
Alfred Schnittke's musical compositions are -------: phrases are clipped, broken into sections, and split apart by long rests.
(A) Garnished
(B) Improvisational
(C) Fragmented
(D) Cautious
(E) Uniform
3) While the SAT has a vocabulary section and the ACT does not, the ACT has a science section while the SAT does not. The science section in the ACT however is not meant to test one’s knowledge of formulas, phylums, or chemical equations though; it is actually designed in a way that would test your reading and reasoning skills. They will give you an experiment or study to read and ask you questions regarding the information. (334)
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