SAT again is most widely used college admission test

The SAT has vaulted past the rival ACT to reclaim its long-held position as the nation’s most widely used college admission test, according to data provided this month to the Washington Post.

Nearly 2 million U.S. students in the Class of 2018 took the SAT during high school, compared with 1.91 million who took the ACT. A surge in delivery of the SAT on school days helped fuel the switch.

Counting international students, 2.1 million students who graduated from high school this year took the SAT. That was up more than 20 percent from the previous year’s global total of 1.7 million.

The ACT had been the overall leader since 2012. But the College Board, which owns the SAT, pushed to expand its market share in recent years by revising the test and entering into deals with numerous states and school systems to give students the exam. New contracts with Colorado and Illinois, College Board data show, were instrumental in the SAT’s growth.

There are stylistic and substantive variations between the tests. The ACT includes a science section, and the SAT doesn’t. A perfect score on the ACT is 36. On the SAT, it’s 1600. But those differences may not matter much for most students.

Both exams claim to be aligned with the school curriculum. Both are about three hours long, not counting breaks and an optional essay. Both focus on math, reading and writing. Colleges will accept a score from either.

David Coleman, president of the College Board, said the test’s growth validated the decision to launch a new version in 2016 with less of the tricky vocabulary that was long a hallmark of the SAT. The new version also dropped the “guessing penalty,” a feature that deducted points for wrong answers.

“It was essential for the College Board’s mission that the new SAT was seen as more straightforward and approachable,” Coleman said. Too often, he said, the older version was seen “narrowly as a test for advanced kids.”

The SAT, first administered in 1926, was long the preeminent admission test. The ACT launched in 1959 as an alternative to measure student achievement.

ACT officials declined to comment on recent SAT gains.