[oldalum]

When I went through the admissions process with my oldest 2 years ago, every admissions counselor said it does not matter to them at all which one you take, they treat them equally. I see no reason not to believe them, and I disagree with the comments above to the contrary. In the distant past, the SAT was clearly the dominant test, but the ACT is now taken by more students than the SAT. That is probably one of the reasons why the SAT is changing next March, apparently to become more like the ACT. (I suspect grandfather is basing his opinion on old information.)


With my oldest, it was universally recommended to take both, because some students do better on one than the other and it is not necessarily predictable from the pretests (and for him, it did not turn out to have been predictable). Almost all schools allow you to send them only the best one even if you took both (not Stanford).

I have a just-finished sophomore too, and the change in the SAT is a wild card in the game. There is no clear path, everything has tradeoffs and uncertainty. Our sophomore has decided to prepare for the old SAT test which is being given for the last time in January 2016 because it is known how to prepare for that one. Then she'll take the ACT, and reassess then. I am a little uncomfortable with that strategy but that's the plan.

[oldalum]

When I went through the admissions process with my oldest 2 years ago, every admissions counselor said it does not matter to them at all which one you take, they treat them equally. I see no reason not to believe them, and I disagree with the comments above to the contrary. In the distant past, the SAT was clearly the dominant test, but the ACT is now taken by more students than the SAT. That is probably one of the reasons why the SAT is changing next March, apparently to become more like the ACT. (I suspect grandfather is basing his opinion on old information.)


With my oldest, it was universally recommended to take both, because some students do better on one than the other and it is not necessarily predictable from the pretests (and for him, it did not turn out to have been predictable). Almost all schools allow you to send them only the best one even if you took both (not Stanford).

I have a just-finished sophomore too, and the change in the SAT is a wild card in the game. There is no clear path, everything has tradeoffs and uncertainty. Our sophomore has decided to prepare for the old SAT test which is being given for the last time in January 2016 because it is known how to prepare for that one. Then she'll take the ACT, and reassess then. I am a little uncomfortable with that strategy but that's the plan.