“Should I take the ACT or SAT?” is a question that many high schoolers from coast to coast find themselves asking each year.
Several years ago this may not have been the case depending upon where someone attended high school. Traditionally, students on the East and West Coasts primarily took the SAT, either because that is all they knew, they had been exposed to SAT prep in school but not ACT prep, or they did not know that many colleges accept the ACT. On the other hand, students from Midwestern, Southern and Central states were more likely to take the ACT or even both tests. There are several reasons for this discrepancy, some of them historical, some political and some based on the presence or lack of ACT information at a student’s school.
Let’s start with the historical reasons.
The SAT is a much older exam than the ACT. Created by Carl Brigham in the Northeast circa 1926, the SAT (initially an acronym standing for Scholastic Aptitude Test) was developed to provide a way for students of any socioeconomic background a chance to compete with those students who came from families with money or social ranking. Yes, there was a time when social standing was the primary way students got acceptance into college. Conversely, the ACT, developed in the 1950’s by E.F. Lindquist, was created to give colleges a way to assess a student’s skills/knowledge and strengths/weaknesses on the four core areas tested (English, Math, Reading Comprehension and Science Reasoning). Given the individualized information a college could then help guide the student and place them more appropriately in college courses. While the ACT received support from its inception, given the SAT’s long term use and a host of other factors, the ACT was not even an option for the first few decades after its inception for many students particularly on the coasts, because many colleges did not accept ACT test scores. Furthermore, the SAT was created in the Northeast where many of the first and prestigious colleges were founded in America, so this only fortified the SAT’s position as the go to test for colleges to use to help them discriminate between ‘viable’ and ‘non-viable’ candidates.
Then in the last few decades ideas about the SAT shifted sparked over multiple controversies including whether the test was biased towards students of a certain socioeconomic background and race.
Regardless, of whether those claims were true or such claims helped to influence changes in the SAT to help reduce such bias, college admission offices began to seriously consider the ACT as a college entrance examination that could be used in lieu of the SAT. In the past decade many schools, including the top-ranking schools from each coast have begun to not only accept ACT scores, but say they are indifferent to whether a student submits SAT or ACT scores.
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