A common question any high school counselor might receive is, “what’s the difference between the ACT and the SAT”? It’s easy to give a cursory response here and talk about the differences in scoring, the structure of the tests, and timing. Those things are a very important part of explaining the differences, but they might not get to the root of the question which could be better asked as, “how do the tests differ in the way they are constructed as they attempt to reflect the abilities of a student”? So, let’s try to answer that more complex question (well, in about 500 words, so I’m going to focus on the verbal parts of the test here).
In my view, to put it in as simple terms as possible, this is a matter of 1. quality vs. quantity, and 2. testing what you already know vs. what you might be capable of coming to know. My opinion here really stems from the SAT's emphasis on what they call “Command of Evidence.” In the College Board’s own words, “the SAT asks you to pay attention to how authors use support in text that cover a range of subjects and styles.” The SAT requires test takers to take a deep dive into tables, graphs, and charts. It requires you to use those to make connections to the text and identify evidence that best supports the author's point of view. In other words, can you read something and flesh out the most important information therein? They incorporate this same skill into the parts of the SAT that relate to a student’s writing skills.
A good illustration of how the tests differ in their approach is seen in the way they evaluate a student’s science aptitude. The ACT has a specific 35 minutes science section on the exam. It certainly requires students to be able to use charts and data to draw conclusions and synthesize information, but it also requires more prior knowledge across a range of science disciplines. On the SAT, there is no science section but students can expect to see some reading passages that require a little science know-how to get through. In this way, the ACT is a little more interested in determining what you already about science whereas the SAT leans more towards discovering a student’s ability to think scientifically.
We further see these differences in the way scores are reported. The ACT reports a single score for each of its sub-sections (English, Math, Reading, Science, and an optional Writing section). To get your overall ACT score, you simply average these subscores. The SAT actually produces 15 different subscores. The way they do this reminds me a lot of how a butcher works. If I slice up an animal this way and include this muscle, this cut of meat is called a whatever, but if I slice it like that and don’t include that, the cut is called this other thing and has different qualities. The SAT slices up the same big test several different ways and produces different scores. So, for science, for example, they slice out the questions related to those science passages and use that to produce a science score as one of the 15 subscores.
The tests are both good indicators of a student's knowledge and ability to think, but they get to that a little differently. I’ve never gotten the sense that colleges prefer one over the other, they are mostly interested in how a student performs against their peers. I believe the best practice is for students to take both and then make additional attempts at whichever one they prefer.
