{"id":16033,"date":"2017-09-26T07:21:16","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T12:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kaptest.com\/blog\/prep\/?p=16033"},"modified":"2020-09-11T20:42:16","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T20:42:16","slug":"pick-b-for-boris-is-the-sat-or-act-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/sat\/pick-b-for-boris-is-the-sat-or-act-easier\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the SAT or ACT Easier?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like to ask my students, \u201cWhat have you heard? Which test is easier, the SAT or ACT?\u201d Most students say they\u2019ve heard the ACT is easier, though a few say the SAT is easier. Some say the tests test different things, while others give a qualified response like \u201cThe ACT is more about critical thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nNone of these answers are right, and I don\u2019t blame my students for not knowing. For some reason, even though the correct answer is pretty simple, the truth just isn\u2019t out there. So here it is: in terms of difficulty, the two tests are\u00a0exactly the same<\/i>. They mathematically have to be. To understand why, you need to know a little bit about the way these tests are scored:
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SAT or ACT: scaled scoring and you<\/h3>
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\nThe SAT and the ACT are each scored on a scale. The short version for now is that neither your SAT or ACT score is based on how many questions you get right. Your score is based on how many questions you get right\u00a0relative to your competition<\/i>.
\nAlthough the ACT and SAT use different scoring scales, the underlying mechanics are the same. For example, a 28 on the ACT puts you in the 90th percentile, which means that you got more questions right than 90 percent of test takers. To hit the 90th percentile on the new SAT, you need to break 1300. At the end of the day, colleges don\u2019t actually care about numbers like \u201c1300\u201d or \u201c28.\u201d What they care about is the percentile each scaled number represents\u2014in other words, the percentage of your competition that you beat.
\nLet\u2019s pretend the urban legend is true and that the ACT has easier questions than the SAT does. What happens when you take the ACT? Well, you get easier questions, but you\u2019re up against people who are\u00a0also getting easier questions<\/i>. More of your competition will get more questions right, so to break the 90th percentile, you\u2019ll need to get\u00a0even more<\/i>\u00a0of the questions right.
\nBy contrast, if you take the SAT and its allegedly \u201charder\u201d questions, you\u2019ll be up against people who are facing the same challenge. Because your fellow test-takers will make more mistakes, you can get a few more questions wrong yourself and still beat 90% of the field.
\nAs a result, it\u2019s not the difficulty of the questions that makes one scaled test harder than another, but rather the difficulty of the competition. Thus, whether you\u2019re taking the SAT or ACT, your competition is exactly the same\u2014other high school students trying to go to college. Since both tests have the same competition, it is mathematically inevitable that each is equally as hard. If you’re interested in a more in-depth explanation of scaled scoring check out this post<\/a>.
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So should you take the SAT or ACT?<\/h3>
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\nWhich is harder: winning a mile-long race or winning a hundred-meter dash? Neither is inherently harder than the other, because of course, while you can run the hundred-meter dash much more quickly, so can the people you\u2019re racing against. That doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t prefer one race over the other, though. If you have amazing sprinting power but get tired quickly, you\u2019ll be better\u2014relative to your competition\u2014at the hundred-meter dash. By contrast, you might be better than the average Joe at racing a whole mile if you have fantastic stamina.
\nSearching online forums or asking your older friends \u201cwhich test is easier\u201d is a complete waste of time. Instead, you need to figure out if one test or the other uniquely caters to any strengths you may have relative to your competition.
\nTo use a simple example: math counts for half your score on the SAT but only a quarter of your score on the ACT. If you\u2019re a math genius, then your superior skills in that arena might benefit you more\u2014again, relative to your competition\u2014on the SAT than on the ACT.
\nThat said, you can take all of these speculation out of the equation by taking a practice test of each and seeing if one percentile is notably higher than the other. If you hit the 70th percentile on a practice ACT but only the 55th on a practice SAT, then for whatever reason, the ACT is the test for you. You can find free practice tests on the test makers\u2019 websites (ACT<\/a>,\u00a0SAT<\/a>) or by attending Kaplan\u2019s\u00a0free events<\/a>.
\nI hope this clears up a common area of confusion and misinformation. Whether you to decide to take the SAT or ACT, go at it hard so you can dominate your competition on Test Day.
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Boris loves teaching complex problems and helping students overcome their Test Day fears. He brings his sense of humor to the classroom–as well as his love of strategy board games.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Boris Dvorkin<\/strong>Kaplan Instructor<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n<\/div>
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I like to ask my students, \u201cWhat have you heard? Which test is easier, the SAT or ACT?\u201d Most students say they\u2019ve heard the ACT is easier, though a few say the SAT is easier. Some say the tests test different things, while others give a qualified response like \u201cThe ACT is more about critical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[60,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16033"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35880,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16033\/revisions\/35880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpapp.kaptest.com\/study\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}