Update: Students Choose SAT or ACT

As anyone involved with high school students knows, the COVID epidemic brought about a significant change in the number of students taking the SAT or ACT for collage admissions. COVID made it difficult for the testing companies to administer the test, colleges felt it would be unfair to require a test from students, and the number of students taking one or the other test dropped from nearly 4 million per year to about 2.8 million.

As COVID abated, the number of students choosing to take one of the tests began to recover in 2022 and has continued to rise each year since. More Colleges have returned to their previous requirement for one of the tests. All the Ivy League schools except for Columbia require an SAT or ACT. But it's not just the Ivies – as of now most of the flagship state universities in the southeast require test scores.  

This week the Washington Post reported the breakdown of the number of students taking each test – that graph shows that since 2021 almost the entire increase in the total number each year can be attributed to additional students taking the SAT, while the numbers for ACT have remained flat.

In 2023, SAT began the rollout of a new digital test, completely redesigned to run on the student's computer. The new test is shorter by 45 minutes and still allows more time per question. The verbal section is more user-friendly. More students I’ve tutored prefer the SAT just based on their experience with the test. Still, I suggest that students choose the test that they are likely to do better on. I help them figure that out so that they only need to prepare for one of the tests.  Colleges do not seem to have a preference between the two. 

See the Post article – here– see the data.

Contact me if you have questions or if I can help.