SAT vs. ACT

While both the SAT and ACT exams are accepted at nearly every college, it is important that students determine the best test to take. To assist in making an informed and effective decision, Competitive Edge offers diagnostic tests for both the ACT and SAT at our testing center and online.

Format:

Scoring:

1600-point SAT to ACT Concordance Table:

New SAT to ACT Concordance Table:

Reading :

The passages on the SAT are often more challenging in terms of vocabulary and complexity than those on the ACT and often include at least one passage from the late 19th or early 20th century or earlier, a type of historical passage extremely unlikely to appear on the ACT. The SAT may also include poetry, which does not appear on the ACT, and graphical analysis questions, which have their nearest ACT analogue in the separate ACT science section. In addition, the SAT’s reading questions tend to be more interpretive and reasoning-based; in comparsion, the ACT favors questions oriented towards specific details in the passage and challenges students to find them efficiently under time constraints. However, SAT Reading no longer presents students with texts longer than a paragraph or with multiple questions referring to a single text; the SAT has also restricted its question types to a limited number of question stems.
The SAT allows 32 minutes for 27 questions on the Verbal part of the exam, which mixes questions about English language conventions with Reading comprehension questions. Since grammar questions usually take less time, Reading questions are effectively allotted more time on the SAT. The ACT demands a quicker pace, allowing 35 minutes to read 4 passages and complete 40 questions – less than one minute per question.
Both vocabulary usage in context and explicit understanding of reasonably sophisticated vocabulary are tested on the SAT; additionally, the difficulty of its passages favor students with stronger vocabularies and close reading skills and those who prefer more time to process complex questions. The ACT Reading section favors students who are faster readers more comfortable with a brisk pace. The primary difference between the SAT and ACT Reading sections, accordingly, might be characterized as an emphasis on depth versus an emphasis on speed: while ACT passages and questions do not require the same level of analysis that the SAT passages and questions do, completing the ACT Reading section does require a quicker speed. The need to navigate and negotiate an entire passage on the ACT compared to the shorter excerpts on the SAT may also significantly influence students’ comfort level and performance on the two tasks.

Writing & Language / English :

The SAT now includes questions about standard English grammar and style (formerly the Writing & Language section) into its comprehensive Verbal section. While the format and content tested are similar to those on the ACT, the number of grammar and style questions is significantly lower, and thus in effect, the scope of material tested is narrower, at least on any particular test, though that may make the task of anticipating and preparing for grammar questions more challengin. Proportionally, the SAT includes more questions on editing decisions than on grammar rules, an emphasis reversed on the ACT.
The SAT allows students 32 minutes to answer 27 questions on both Reading comprehension and grammar; the ACT allows 45 minutes to answer 75 questions in 5 passages. Again, the ACT effectively demands a quicker pace.

Math :

Some important differences between the SAT and the ACT Math sections are readily apparent. The SAT includes an integrated computer graphing functionality (available separately online as the website Desmos) while the ACT does not, and each SAT math section incorporates student-produced responses (or “fill ins”) in addition to multiple choice questions while the ACT is exclusively multiple choice.
Compared to the ACT, the SAT places greater emphasis on the fundamentals of math (percents,rates, unit conversions, fractions, proportions, etc), algebra skills, functions (particularly linear, quadratic, and exponential), interpretation of graphs and charts, “real-world” application problems, surveys and statistics, and connections between words and algebra. It deemphasizes geometry, most topics in trigonometry/precalculus, and various number and operations topics (e.g. factors/multiples, remainders, sequences, radicals). Thus, the SAT pulls from a much narrower pool of math topics than does the ACT, mirroring the depth versus breadth dichotomy of the two reading sections: several questions on the SAT math section will test the same concept whereas the ACT’s math questions are much more diverse.
Again, the ACT requires more speed than the SAT: on the ACT, students have 60 minutes for 60 questions (for an average of one minute per question); on the SAT, students have 35 minutes for 22 questions on each of the two Math modules, or more than 90 seconds per question.
Overall, the emphasis on verbal/qualitative understanding on the SAT the math section favors students with a strong conceptual foundation and good problem-solving skills. Students who enjoy using computer-based modelling, who excel at reading and interpreting information given in graphs and charts, and who successfully apply algebraic concepts to word problems will find the SAT a good fit. Students who are daunted by tricky and unusual question types or reasoning challenges, who excel at more advanced content areas with less complicated problem solving, and who are comfortable working at a greater speed may prefer the ACT.

Essay: SAT vs ACT

On the ACT, students are given a paragraph about an issue and then three quotes expressing different perspectives on the issue. The essay prompt asks students to evaluate and analyze the given perspectives, state their perspective, and explain the relationship between their perspective and those presented. The SAT offers no corresponding written essay section.

Systematic advantages to preparing for the ACT over the SAT :

Students should select the test that is most comfortable for them. However, there are significant advantages in choosing to prepare for the ACT over the SAT for most students which stem, ultimately, from the SAT’s recent redesign (which rolled out internationally in 2023 and in the US in 2024). These advantages include the following:

We have inferior data about the SAT exam itself, its scope, and its scale, given the recency of its revamp and the resulting paucity of official practice tests. 

• SAT has not been transparent about how its new adaptive scaling algorithm works; in fact, scaling on existing adaptive tests has actually changed (a fact that was neither explained nor publicized) since students began practicing with them. That makes it much harder to predict with confidence how students will perform on an official test even armed with a series of “authentic” mock test results and their overall academic profile.
• Similarly, we do not yet know if colleges and universities will evaluate SAT scores any differently now that the test has changed. We may see fluctuations in average scores in the near future for the SAT, and we can’t predict how admissions officers will compare those scores to ACT scores from other students. An updated ACT/SAT concordance table, which SAT has published in the past, may be many months away.
• SAT has released only eight exams for the new format, only four of which are digital. It has also discontinued the practice of releasing selected exam papers from actual test administrations (the “Question and Answer” service, or QAS) with its new adaptive format, meaning students will not be able to use results from prior administrations to guide further preparation and that the flow of new official material will be severely constrained. The most important element of prepping for a standardized test is the ability to give authentic, predictive and diagnostic assessments at very regular intervals and test-based homework on a weekly basis. Such assessments not only allow us to track students’ score progress but allow us to gauge mastery of every possible topic a student might see. In contrast to the SAT, the ACT has changed very little in the past 20 years. Consequently, we have nearly 100 real ACT exams — tests students actually took, that come with real scaling charts– that provide students exposure to exactly the right kinds of problems and allow us to make sure no stone is left unturned. This materials gap has considerable implications for a student’s test prep process. Students preparing for the SAT may well find themselves exhausting official practice materials well before they take the exam, and third-party publishers have poor track records of creating similarly predictive material. On the other hand, students preparing for the ACT have access to an incredibly large body of official practice tests, which enables them to become intimately familiar with the ACT without having to worry about running out of materials.
• We cannot fully predict differences in how colleges and universities may evaluate SAT scores now that the test has changed. We may see fluctuations in average scores in the near future for the SAT, and we can’t predict how admissions officers will compare those scores to ACT scores from other students. The only published ACT/SAT concordance table we have was created by SAT without the cooperation of ACT and doesn’t reflect the results of real students: rather, it maps the new SAT on to the old SAT and then uses data from old SAT scores and ACT scores, a process which certainly introduces error and uncertainty.
• While perhaps considered less prestigious than the SAT in the past, the ACT is now equally well-respected and universally accepted at all postsecondary institutions. As such, students incur no disadvantage by taking the ACT.
• Perhaps most importantly, far more authentic material exists for ACT preparation. While we now have about two dozen official SAT exams (along with some pSATs), the most important element of prepping for a standardized test is the ability to give authentic, predictive and diagnostic assessments at very regular intervals and test-based homework on a weekly basis. Only some of the available SATs were actually given to students, and only a subset of those that were administered include a published scaling chart that reflects real scores. On the other hand, we have more than 70 real ACT exams — tests students actually took, that come with real scaling charts– that provide students exposure to exactly the right kinds of problems and allow us to make sure no stone is left unturned. This deficit has huge implications for a student’s test prep process. Students preparing for the SAT may well find themselves exhausting official practice materials well before they take the exam, and third-party publishers have poor track records of creating similarly predictive material. On the other hand, students preparing for the ACT have access to an incredibly large body of official practice tests, which enables them to become intimately familiar with the ACT without having to worry about running out of materials.