With junior year of high school coming up and competitive colleges beginning to slowly integrate mandatory testing back into their application process, the SAT and ACT are the two most common tests that students take when applying to college.
The SAT, created, distributed and administered by the College Board, takes a total of 2 hours and 14 minutes, with only digital options being offered now. The SAT consists of a Reading and Writing section that is split between two 32-minute modules, as well as a Math section that has two 35-minute modules. Conversely, the ACT takes 2 hours and 55 minutes and is split into 4 sections. The sections go in the order of English, Math, Reading and Science and take 45, 60, 35 and 35 minutes, respectively.
Though each exam assesses similar topics, some nuances can make a particular test more appealing and appropriate for certain people. For instance, Anya Kothari, a current junior, who started studying for the SAT during the summer, took the PSAT and feels more familiar with the format. “I’m just more used to the format of the SAT, and I haven’t taken the ACT, so I don’t know exactly if I would like that format better,” Kothari said.
When she first took the test, most of it was what she had expected, but some parts were more challenging. “It was definitely harder to manage time better on the second section […] especially because of the adaptive aspect of it,” Kothari said. For her, this can be both beneficial and detrimental because the questions that appear on the second section rely heavily on the first section. Thus, there is more pressure to perform well on the first section in order to increase the threshold of one’s score. Overall, Kothari wants to stay with the test and recommends people to do plenty of practice tests in order to be familiar with the format of the test.
Other Menlo students took the ACT because they felt the paper version was more suitable for them. Junior Munveer Singh, who took the test in October 2024, is one of those students. “Paper and pencil is the medium I prefer for tests, especially since you can write out your work for math,” Singh said. For him, formatting makes a difference in the English section, where the longer stories make it easier for him to keep track of what’s going on, compared to the SAT’s individual sentences. Singh felt fully prepared before taking the test. “I had done numerous practice tests before so I did not feel worried overall,” Singh said.
The only thing that he found to be irritating was how the ACT was contained in a long booklet, which made it harder because he would have to write on a curve. Similar to Kothari, his advice for future test takers is to do enough practice by taking on practice problems to the point where one feels confident with it. “I think just doing as much practice as you can find and really committing time by creating a schedule can be so helpful,” Singh said.
