College Entrance Exams: ACT or SAT?

Graduating seniors at The Bishop Manogue Catholic High School, a private high school in Reno, Nevada, don't take chances when it comes to getting into a good college. They spend their last year completing application forms and writing essays for the colleges they have targeted. To improve their odds, they usually take the "shotgun" approach of submitting applications to a long list of schools.

     Before they draw up that list, however, they face another major decision: Which admissions test—the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) Program or the American College Testing (ACT) Assessment—should they take? The question is not simply a matter of testing fees. While the SAT has been judged for years the proving ground for entering freshmen at Ivy League schools, more schools in Manogue's backyard—the West and Mountain States—have traditionally adopted the ACT.

     In the end, Manogue senior James Patterson chose the super-cautious route: He took both. In fact, Manogue recommends that all their college-bound students take both tests. To improve his scores, Patterson took both tests four times each—so his senior year was one long blur of No. 2 pencils and computer-graded answer sheets.

     Did his strategy pay off? "The SAT gave me a constant picture of my skills, since my scores stayed pretty much the same," Patterson says. "On the ACT, my scores increased each time I took it. I'm glad I took both."

Checking them out

     Admissions exams are a necessary rite of passage to enter almost any U.S. college or university. Except the driver's license exam, most Americans know the SAT and ACT better than any other test. More than 2.4 million students will suffer through at least one of them in the 1995-1996 school year.

     Why do these tests carry such weight? "The best predictor of success during that first year is a combination of your high school grades and SAT scores," says Fred Moreno, director of public affairs for the College Entrance Examination Board, which oversees the SAT. "We're 95 percent certain that a valid connection exists between ACT scores and freshman grades," agrees Kelley Hayden, director of corporate communications for the ACT Program.

     For students along the East and West coasts—and applicants to America's top-flight universities—the SAT has long been the exam of choice. SAT-I—the new version of the former Scholastic Aptitude Test that debuted in March 1994, after six years of research and re-tooling —contains seventy-eight questions testing verbal skills (seventy-five minutes), sixty math problems (seventy-five minutes), and thirty minutes of pre-testing activities.

     In twenty-eight states throughout the Southeast, Midwest, and Rocky Mountain region, more students take the ACT Assessment, a 175-minute exam in four parts: English (seventy-five questions), mathematics (sixty questions), reading comprehension (forty questions), and science reasoning (forty questions).

     One obvious question surfaces: Why do we have two different college entrance exams?

     The SAT came out of the starting gate in 1926, when 8,040 students completed the prototype: a nine-subject multiple-choice test. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) designed the SAT as a cut-off mechanism that the most competitive schools could use to select the best students.

     After World War II, many Western colleges—especially the state university systems—who were admitting students left and right simply needed a method of measuring the academic skills of incoming freshmen so they could be placed in the proper courses. Researchers at the University of Iowa developed that method—the ACT—in 1959.

    Today, college admissions testing is big business. American College Testing alone reportedly boasts a $60 million budget and nine hundred employees. For-profit companies like the Princeton Review and Stanley Kaplan, which offer test preparation books, videos, and courses, generate more than $100 million annually.

Making a choice

     Both tests hit the basics—the kindergarten-through-beginning-of-twelfth- grade skills that entering freshmen should possess to survive that first year. However, the SAT and ACT package that material in very different ways.

Mathematics: While the multiple-choice questions on both tests cover the full range of high-school math, from pre-algebra to trigonometry, the SAT-I features two types of questions not found on the ACT.

• First, fifteen "quantitative comparisons" ask you to decide whether one quantity is greater than another. For example, if xy = 10 and yz = 12, then which is greater: 8/x or 4/y?
• In another set of ten questions, you must solve each problem and write your answer into a grid. These questions rob you of one traditional SAT test- taking strategy: Eliminating answers in a multiple-choice question to improve your chances at guessing correctly.
• Breaking with the past, the new SAT actually encourages students to use their calculators during the test.

Verbal: Both tests rely heavily upon traditional reading passages and multiple-choice questions to test your verbal skills.

• The ACT verbal portion includes two formats. Five prose selections in the English test pose questions about punctuation, grammar, and rhetorical skills (e.g., "Which sentence would have provided a better transition between the first and second paragraphs?").
• In the ACT's reading comprehension test, four passages—two from social studies and science texts, two from the arts and literature—offer ten questions each to discover whether you understood what you read.
• On the new SAT, there is more focus on critical reading skills, with four longer reading passages (400-850 words each, with ten questions per passage).
• Also, the SAT-I includes nineteen sentences that you must complete by choosing the proper word, along with nineteen analogies (such as "Chisel is to sculptor as brush is to _________.").

Science reasoning: This section is the most critical difference between the tests. In a unique twist, the ACT throws in a forty-question, thirty-five- minute portion devoted to understanding the content of science experiments and theories. You must answer multiple-choice questions about seven sets of scientific data—arranged as graphs, research summaries, or conflicting conclusions from different scientists.

• For example, two climatologists will present their theories about global warming. While one researcher outlines his evidence for concluding that we have begun experiencing the greenhouse effect, the other scientist will refute that notion. You might be asked to identify the types of evidence that would better support the theory of global warming, or to decide how the second scientist's conclusions would affect the daily lives of average citizens.

Which one is better ?

     Now comes the jackpot question: Is one test easier than the other? Among Manogue seniors, it depends on whom you ask.

     "My sister at Harvard told me to take both tests," says Antoinette Thomas, who applied to six colleges. "The questions on the SAT were more difficult, but I did have trouble on the science portion of the ACT."

     "I wanted to experience both exams," notes Lindsay Wallace, vying for a spot at eight different schools. "The ACT had more difficult sections. I preferred the SAT's focus on just the math and verbal skills."

     Do colleges treat the tests differently? That question is largely moot, since the majority of America's 3,600 colleges and universities—from Harvard and M.I.T. to local community colleges—accept scores from either test.

     A few schools definitely prefer one or the other. "Ninety-nine percent of our students take the SAT," says Bryan Zerbe, assistant director of admissions at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. "We didn't make that a policy because we think the SAT is better, but because we've found that most high school seniors in the Northeast take the SAT. Personally, I think the SAT is more oriented towards testing aptitude for college, while the ACT may focus too much on content."

      On the other hand, the state university system in Mississippi requires the ACT, so that the schools have a common basis for tracking the academic progress of incoming freshmen. And Murray State University in Kentucky makes students with SAT scores take the ACT, too, so they can correlate our own research studies.

      By taking both tests, you can discard worries about which test is easier or better. "In fact, I urge students who have scored low on one test to take the other one, in hopes of getting a better score in that different format," says David Thawley, dean for CABNR at the University of Nevada. "And always take the tests twice. How many things in life have you done better the second time around?"

     In isolated cases, taking both tests can bring you unexpected benefits. "We have found that some seniors can offer sections of the ACT in lieu of taking additional Achievement Tests," says Rose Lucas, the college placement officer at The Manogue Catholic High School.

     Regardless of which test you choose, one common denominator will be hard to escape: stress. "People who can't remember their shoe size don't forget what they got on the SAT," writes David Owen in None of the Above: Behind the Myth of Scholastic Aptitude .

     On the other hand, observes Lucas, the exams are simply a narrow measure of vocabulary, mathematics, and paragraph reading—not a measure of intelligence. "These tests are only a step along the road to college," she says, "not the be-all-and-end-all hurdle that some students—and their parents— make them out to be."

Does prepping work ?

     Can you boost your scores on the SAT and ACT with commercial prep courses and other aids? According to the two major national companies in this field, you can take the idea of extra points to the bank.

      "We offer a 100 percent 'satisfaction guaranteed' policy that you will improve your SAT scores by a combined one-hundred points," says Brett Littman, assistant SAT director in New York City for the Princeton Review (also called PReview).

      John Katzman, who started the company in 1981 with a $3,000 loan from his parents, pioneered the idea that students do not need to become smarter people in order to make big score gains on the SAT. Instead, they could use his techniques to "crack the code," learning to out-think the testmakers and avoid the traps set on the SAT.

      "The test is created for the average student," explains Patricia Krebbs, director of the PReview center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. "Because ETS is trying to trap low-scoring students on difficult questions, there are certain things they resort to in order to create answers that look right, feel right, and are wrong—what we call distractor answers." PReview teaches you to recognize and avoid distractor answers.

      At the same time, you can brush up on basic math skills and the vocabulary list—the "Hit Parade"—that contains the words that appear most frequently on the SAT.

      The SAT PReview gives you forty-two hours of live classroom instruction and fourteen diagnostic hours, while the ACT version includes twenty-eight hours and seven hours respectively. Tuition ranges from $375 to $695.

      How good are the practice materials? Suffice it to say that Katzman was once sued by ETS because his sample SAT problems were too much like the actual test.

      Kelly Bright, a student at Galena High School in Reno, Nevada, realized a 320-point increase in his SAT scores after taking the Princeton Review. "Princeton Review taught me how to budget my time and helped me not to over-analyze," he says. "When I took the test the second time, I didn't feel rushed at all. I had time to check my answers." Of the PReview practice tests, he says, "I think the diagnostics were slightly harder than the real thing."

     The Stanley Kaplan firm has been around since 1938 and claims 150,000 students prepare for tests in its centers each year. While many of these students are preparing for entrance exams to medical, business, and law schools, Kaplan draws a steady stream of high school students seeking help with the ACT and SAT.

     With prices in the same range as the Princeton Review ($310 to $645), the Kaplan SAT course includes seven lectures, two informal math clinics, three "virtual realities" using computer-assisted teaching technologies, homework on disks, and an untimed skills inventory. The ACT course combines the twelve classroom sessions into eight sessions. The home study materials feature vocabulary lists and math problems on flash cards.

      Making full use of what Kaplan offers is time-intensive and requires a large dose of discipline. "We don't believe you can cut corners with tricks," says Dr. Stuart Glovinsky, a psychometrician in Kaplan's New York headquarters, in a jab at the Princeton Review. "The basic skills have to be there." So, unlike PReview, Kaplan doesn't offer a guaranteed score increase.

     Steve Irrobali at Bishop Manogue found Kaplan's review for the PSAT—the SAT-like exam through which students qualify for National Merit Scholarships—to be just the ticket for him. "I knew my 91 percent wasn't good enough," he says. "I felt like I could do better."

      During his summer vacation, Irrobali devoted three hours every Wednesday night for eight weeks to Kaplan. He studied 150 vocabulary words a week, did regular math homework, and never missed a class. When he re- took the PSAT in the fall, he scored in the 99th percentile.

      "Kaplan helped me refine the knowledge I already had," he says. To Steve, his score increase had little to do with strategies. "Most of the strategies they taught were things I had already figured out. To me, it's that I really am a smarter person for having taken the course."

Serious doubts

     Both Kaplan and PReview can produce satisfied customers. But every student should know, before trying to scare up the money and committing a substantial amount of time, that major studies on the effects of commercial coaching on SAT and ACT scores have raised serious doubts about its value.

      A study reported in The Journal of College Admissions found that "preparation affords a negligible impact on verbal scores and a statistically significant, although relatively small, improvement for math."

     It further reported that "[differences] in student-reported levels of motivation to do special preparation, time spent in actual prep classes or tutoring sessions, and time spent doing prep homework, were all found to be dramatically insignificant." Translation: Don't bank on a score increase that will affect admissions decisions.

     If time and money are not issues for you, then by all means spend away. But if you do choose a commercial prep course, decide carefully which prep program provides the best match for you and the test you're taking.

Authors John Hawks & Dana Wynne Lindquist