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What's harder, 1500 on the SAT or 34 on the ACT?

By Neo (Neo) on Saturday, October 18, 2003 - 08:49 pm: Edit

Depends.

By Drusba (Drusba) on Saturday, October 18, 2003 - 09:29 pm: Edit

Statistically, the 34 is a little more than twice as hard to get as the 1500. For the high school class of 2003, 1.18 million of the persons in that class took the ACT and 4861 scored 34 or above (.4%). For the SAT, 1.4 million of the class of 2003 took the SAT and 13,897 scored 1500 or above (.9%). Also, for admissions purposes the 1500 is even far more easy to get than the 34 because the vast majority of colleges will take your highest verbal and highest math SAT subscores from multiple tests to get a total score, whereas the vast majority of colleges will only take your highest composite ACT score and won't mix and match subscores from multiple tests to get the composite.

By Freudboy (Freudboy) on Saturday, October 18, 2003 - 11:13 pm: Edit

why is this? ive been looking at the ACT and it seems 1000x easier than the SAT. No vocab. No analogies. Straightforward math. Easy grammar questions, easy critical reading. A 36 on the ACT looks like a cakewalk! However, i have never taken it, can anyone who has taken it tell me why it is so hard?

By Desigothic (Desigothic) on Saturday, October 18, 2003 - 11:23 pm: Edit

i never took it but gonna take it soon. maybe in feb. but i've known from various sources that its hard cuz its short in time. u dont even have a guessing penalty but in sat u get about 60 seconds per questions whereas in act u get 30 seconds per question.

By Drusba (Drusba) on Saturday, October 18, 2003 - 11:51 pm: Edit

Some find the SAT easier, some the ACT. The ACT is more straightforward and avoids trying to trick you like the SAT does. One major difference is the lack of any real curve for the ACT. You can miss several questions and still score 1600 or very close to it on the SAT. The ACT requires virtual perfection to score 36 -- you can actually miss a couple because if your subscores are 35, 35, 36, and 36, you still get a 36 because they round up a .5 in an average of the four subscores to the next highest number. But the ACT can be brutal in that missed question regard. For example, on tests last spring if you missed one of the easy or medium difficulty questions on the science section your subscore was down to 34, miss two of those and you were down to 32. Thus, whether the ACT is the "easier" test is not the issue; it is just harder to score high on the ACT. Also, the majority find the time allowed to be insufficient to answer all the questions on any section.

By Freudboy (Freudboy) on Sunday, October 19, 2003 - 01:16 am: Edit

if i make careless errors on the SAT, and that is what brings my score down, is it safe to say that i will also make careless errors on the ACT? or is it less likely because the ACT is more straightforward and the SAT is a bunch of tricks?

By Ilovefood (Ilovefood) on Thursday, October 23, 2003 - 06:07 pm: Edit

The ACT is more curriculum-based, where the SAT is based on thinking skills and doesn't get into as much math as the ACT. As for the 34 v. 1500 thing, I got a 34 on the ACT and only a 1440 on the SAT, but I'm only one example. A kid who graduated from my school last year had a 1580 SAT with a 34 ACT.

By Andrey1225 (Andrey1225) on Saturday, November 01, 2003 - 10:42 am: Edit

When I took the ACT the curve really through me off. I was 99th percentile in science reasoning but only got a 32 on the section.....and I was 98th percentile for the composite test and got a 31.

Whereas 99th percentile for the SATs is at least over 750 for math and verbal, and im guessing a 98th percentile combined score would be over 1450, although I'm not sure.