[VIDEO ANSWER] How do I know whether to take the SAT or the ACT?

Test Prep Authority – Office Hours #1 – Question: “How do I know whether to take the SAT or the ACT?”

ACT vs SAT Guide: https://www.testprepauthority.com/guides/act-vs-sat/

Which is, “How do I know whether to take the SAT or ACT?” So again, believe it or not, there is a free guide on Test Prep Authority that answers this question and you really want to go through or you’re going to want to go through and you’re going to want to check out this whole thing because it is an in-depth process. But what’s funny is that most students; you’re going to know the answer to this already and the way you’ll know is this, are you a deep ponderer or are you a slammer when it comes to your work? I always say that the SAT is a ballet and ACT is a sprint. The SAT is a game of chess and the ACT is a marathon. Basically the SAT is just really, really slow pondering, convoluted problems. You get a lot of time for each problem and you really have to digest them, watch out for tricks and really think deeply, whereas the ACT there aren’t that many tricks, but boom they’re asked one after the other. There are no breaks. You’re given almost no time. So are you the person who can just sit down for four hours and just go, then the ACT would be great. If you have ADD or you get distracted easily like I do, then you probably want to take the SAT. It’s probably going to be a little bit better for you, but diagnostics are king here.

So the really short answer is, take a full-length diagnostic for the SAT, take a full-length diagnostic for the ACT, compare your scores using the concordance table. Again, this is all in the online guide on Test Prep Authority. Figure out which one you’re better at, take that one and focus and that’s all there is to it and again, do not study for both, study for one and one last thing is one better than the other? Do colleges prefer one more than the other? No, and the hilarious thing is that it’s very regional as far as what your opinions are going to be on these tests. I have people who are in Massachusetts or New York and they go, “My son, take the ACT, he’s not some hippie, some idiot.” Right, and then I have people from Ohio or from Texas and they say, “My daughter, take the SAT, she’s not some hippie idiot.” Right? Depending on where you’re from, one test is randomly typecast as hard and one is typecast as the easy bohemian one, both are totally false. Any college sees both as equals, 2,400 is a 36. Just take the one that you’re going to get the better comparative score on and go with that. There is no favorite when it comes to college application committees.