College Admissions Tests

The ACT and SAT tests are a part of the lives of nearly all high school students. As a school counselor I receive questions about these tests all the time - which test should I take, do I *have* to take a test, how many times should I take a test, what does my score mean, what if I didn't score as high as I think I should have and how do you figure out how the scores compare to one another... and quite honestly the list goes on and on.

Today, let's talk for a second about the score comparisons. A lot of you took both the ACT and SAT this spring and have received their scores and are now considering which test to take again in the fall. It's important to review the requirements for the schools you are considering and see what they are looking for and where you fall compared to their averages. Some students will want to repeat both tests and some will elect to focus on the test they did "better" on the first time through and try to improve that score.

But how do you know which test you did "better" on? Well, the ACT and SAT recently released concordance tables to help students (and colleges) compare scores for students across the different tests. I'll be honest - these tables can seem a little confusing at first, but if you read the information on the pages prior to the tables then you will understand them easily. Table 1 will let you compare your SAT score based on a 1600 scale with the ACT without writing. Most of you will have taken the ACT with writing (and you NEED to take it with writing in the future as colleges are moving toward considering the writing test more and more) so you will be use the data on Table 2 to get the writing score and then you will add that to the results from Table 1 to get an accurate overall score based upon the 2400 scale.

Try not to get stressed out about the college admissions tests... I know it can be frustrating, but remember it is only one piece to the puzzle that the colleges will be considering when evaluating students!