SAT vs. ACT – The classic battle between the two giants of standardized testing has long since been a concern for any student making their foray into preparation for college. After years of conflict, the SAT redesigned its test in 2015 to make it more similar to the ACT’s model. Despite this, ACT did not allow convergence from the new SAT due to the lack of data.

College Board developed and posted a concordance when it first released its latest SAT, but ACT objected to the unilateral effort because ACT believed there was insufficient data to draw conclusions. After two plus years of data on the new SAT, the ACT organization has decided that it has been long enough, and an ACT/SAT concordance table has been published on the ACT website. You can find the link here. This means that there is now an official ACT/SAT way to compare the two standardized tests. The table below shows a sample of the data in the convergence tables.

Note: For the sake of brevity, only ACT Scores from 26-36 will be shown. For information such as other scores and subject-specific convergence tables, please view the full document here.

SAT Total Range ACT Composite
1600-1570 36
1570-1530 35
1520-1490 34
1480-1450 33
1440-1420 32
1410-1390 31
1380-1360 30
1350-1330 29
1320-1300 28
1290-1260 27
1250-1230 26
In effect, this joint effort by the ACT and the SAT reduces the stress placed on the student by making them choose between the two tests. To all the folks at the ACT and the SAT, well done.