ACT® or SAT®? An Expert Tutor’s Guide

Choosing between the ACT and SAT is an important decision, but it’s not always the big deal that some people make it out to be. There are more factors to consider than just what’s on each test, though. Both tests have virtually the same content.

Each Test asks questions in an idiosyncratic way. Very few students actually do much better on one test than the other. It’s not a good idea to chose the ACT or the SAT based on the content or structure of either. There are still good reasons to prefer one over the other. Read on to learn more.

What’s on Each Test?

There are some important structural differences between the ACT® Test and the SAT® Test. It’s important to understand how each is different. But the structural differences alone shouldn’t be the single deciding factor when choosing between the two Tests.

SAT at a Glance

The SAT® Test has gone through many iterations since its inception. In recent history, the SAT® Test undergoes a substantial redesign approximately every 10 years. Smaller but significant updates occur in between the redesigns. This guide is updated for 2024.

The SAT® Test takes 2 hours and 14 minutes. There is a 10-minute break between the Reading and Writing and the Math tests. As of 2024, the SAT® Test has the following sections:

Students can use a calculator on all sections of the math. Students can bring their own calculator and computer. The SAT® Test will also provide students with a computer and a calculator if they don’t bring their own.

The Test is fully digital. There may be some exceptions to take the Test with pencil and paper made for students with learning disabilities.

The SAT® Test has “adaptive questioning.” That means the Test difficulty changes depending on a student’s performance.

There’s no Essay Section on the SAT® Test anymore. Some school day administrations (where students take the test in school) may exist. Your child’s school will inform the students well in advance if there’s going to be an essay section.

ACT at a Glance

The ACT® Test is 2 hours and 55 minutes, with a 15 minute break between the Math and Reading tests. The ACT® Test has the follow sections:

Digital ACT at a Glance (2025)

Starting in 2025, the ACT® will roll out the Digital ACT. The new test will be available in schools in spring before being rolled out nationwide in the fall. Source

The New ACT® Test lasts 2 hours 5 minutes. It has the following sections.

The ACT® will continue to offer a paper and pencil option in addition to the digital version. The changes in the digital version will show up in the paper and pencil test in September 2025.

The ACT® Test will not be adaptive, meaning the questions will not change based on a student’s performance.

Comparing the ACT® Test and the SAT® Test

By now, you’ve seen the differences in content at a high level for both the SAT® Test and ACT® Test. The differences are just that: differences. It’s hard to make a recommendation one way or another based on the content. It’s important to understand what the Tests are so they can be compared.

To understand the differences between the two Tests, knowing a little bit about how each has changed is a big part of why I have a preference for one test over the other. Don’t worry about making too much of these changes. The intention is merely to demonstrate the stark contrast in changes made by the SAT® Test and the ACT® Test.

SAT Changes

Here’s a brief timeline of some of the biggest changes in recent history to the SAT® Test.

1. 1994 – increased reading section time and questions; decreased rote vocab; added calc and multiple true options.
2. 2005 – removed analogies from verbal section; removed quantitative comparison section from math; added writing section; increase max score to 2400
3. 2016 – more “evidenced-based” reading; less “obscure” vocabulary; reduced number of options for questions from 5 to 4; essay becomes optional; scope of math test narrows; removed guessing penalty; score max decreased to 1600
4. 2024 – SAT Digital; redesign of sections; SAT shortened to two hours from three; removal of no calc section in math.

ACT Changes

Here’s a brief timeline of some of the biggest changes in recent history to the ACT® Test.

1. 1989 – Added Reading Section
2. 2005 – Added Optional Writing Test
3. 2025 – Redesigned Digital ACT to reduce total number of questions; science test made optional.

Notice how little has changed on the ACT® Test. It’s very much the same test today as it always been. There are ACT® Tests from as far back as 1996 that still look just like the 2024 ACT. That includes test prep books and tutor experience on how to teach the ACT.

T here have been some minor changes to the ACT® Test since the late 90s. These changes are one of four reading tests, and a change in emphasis on each section of the Test. Recent Changes to the ACT In recent years, the ACT® Reading Test has adopted a dual passage. One reading section (usually social studies) will have a dual passage and questions comparing the two passages.

The change in total content emphasized is harder to qualify because each and every ACT® Test has a different emphasis. For example, one test may emphasize apostrophes more, whereas another test may emphasize comma rules. On the other hand, some topics have become much more frequent over the years. Vectors and matrices are two good examples of topics that have become much more recurring on the Test.

My educated guess as a tutoring professional is that the ACT® Test is reducing the total number of questions on the “enhanced” ACT® Test because the current number of questions allows the Test to emphasize certain types of questions. In other words, reducing the number of questions could reduce the emphasis on certain topics, since there will be less of a chance to repeat content in a more limited set of questions.

This is, again, my best educated guess based on reading the ACT® Technical Manual but certainly not information I have from the ACT® Test. Of course, tests can change. Some might say that the Tests should change. The point isn’t whether or not changing is a good or bad thing. The ACT® Test has much better resources available for students merely due to the fact that it’s changed a lot less.

Comparing Data Reporting

The data reporting on each test is vastly different. Reporting is an invaluable tool that enables students to correct their mistakes. The better the data, the easier it is to learn from one’s mistakes.

SAT® Test

That doesn’t map on exactly to nice known categories. The College Board® (the people who make the SAT® Test) doesn’t release detailed scoring information. Here’s an example of the answers it hass released. The only thing to see is that they don’t provide guidance around how they come up with reporting categories internally.

It’s unclear how to precisely map on certain concepts onto the reporting categories. That makes studying only a student’s mistakes harder. Studying for the Digital SAT® Test is still totally possible. Here's how the SAT® is scored, including available reporting categories.

A bonus to the SAT® Tests’s reporting categories is that they have partnered officially with Khan Academy®. If you decide to take the SAT® Test, definitely feel free to use Khan Academy. Professionally, I recommend students use Khan Academy for core concepts they don’t know all the time. https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/digital-sat

ACT® Test

Score Reporting First of all, the ACT® Test has been much the same since 1989. The tests from at least as far back as 1996 still look the same as the ACT® Test in 2024. Even with the forthcoming changes to the ACT® Test in 2025, the past decades of content will remain useful.

Will students need to prepare differently for the test? New test prep options, including a full-length practice test, will be available by early 2025. Current practice tests and available ACT test prep materials are still great for preparing because there has been no significant change in the types of knowledge and skills measured by the ACT test with the enhancements.

More to the point, the ACT® Test provides really useful data for studying. Each of their publicly available practice tests has a detailed reporting category. The ACT® Technical Manual clearly outlines the concepts in each category.

It’s really easy to know exactly which concepts in each category a student is missing. For example, on a given ACT® English Test, questions 1, 15, 50 are all comma questions. Depending on how many of those questions a student got right or wrong, he or she would know exactly whether or not to study commas.

To be fair to the SAT® Test, a similar sort of reporting could be possible. The material is virtually identically between the two Tests. Without clear data from the College Board® itself, it’s hard to be certain how the concepts map onto reporting categories. Achieving the absolute certainty on how to increase a student’s SAT® Test score is therefore harder.

I’ve helped many students increase their scores on both the SAT® and ACT® Tests, including helping students achieve perfect scores and gain admission into all of the top 20 colleges in the States and more. The slight degree of opaqueness on the SAT® Test makes studying in a well-optimized way more difficult but by no means impossible.

Concordance Between Tests

The ACT® Test and the SAT® Test both have concordance tables. That means that each Test has an equivalent score on the other Test. Even with all of the changes on both Tests, you can always find what an equivalent score would be.

Fortunately, the reporting on concordance tables is very good and easily accessible for both Tests.

Colleges Requiring Test Scores

Similarly, all colleges that accept the SAT® Test also accept the ACT® Test. And vice versa. There’s no difference in terms of a college preferring one test over the other, if the college accepts standardized test scores at all in the first place.

A college’s preference for a certain test shouldn’t factor in to one’s decision-making process. That’s because no such preference exists. H2 Difference for some students Very few students actually do better on the ACT® Test than on the SAT® Test. It’s so rare this actually happens. For most students, it shouldn’t be a concern. For maybe 1 in 1000, one test might actually be easier than the other.

Here’s my qualitative, not quantitative, description of each test.

The SAT® Test

The SAT® Test tends to be so specific. There aren’t many vocab questions as such any more. Instead, the questions are literal in a way some students have a hard time comprehending.

Instead of testing a student’s reasoning ability on a reading question, the Test tends to want students to find evidence and match that evidence to the answer choices. Of course, both Tests require evidence-based answers.

The SAT® Test tends to ask this type of question in such a narrow way that causes a very small subsection of students to struggle. The Math questions can feel somewhat procedural compared to the ACT® Test.

This is neither good nor bad. It’s just a difference. Not every single person is well-suited to this type of question – at least not everybody in high school has time to learn to think this way.

The ACT® Test

The ACT® is very rules-based in a way the SAT® isn’t always. Especially on the English Test, for example, a large portion of the questions are somewhat rote applications of grammar rules.

The Math Test is a little different in this regard. While a good deal of the questions are straightforward math rules, they’re seldom one math rule. The ACT® Math likes to pull from topics across domains: for example, solve this geometry question using algebra.

The ACT® Reading does line reference questions in a less literal way that’s nonetheless evidence-based. Though these questions are few, there are more vocab-like questions than on the SAT® Test.

The Science Test feels like a misnomer at times. There’s definitely science on it. But there are also science questions on the SAT® Test: they’re just parts of different sections.

The ACT® Science Test Scores tends to align with their other section scores for most students. It’s just reading graphs, charts, and tables for the most part.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the decisions between SAT® Test and ACT® Test needs to be made by each person. It’s a student’s responsibility to study for one test or the other. I would slightly recommend the ACT® Test over the SAT® Test based on my years of experience, the amount of material available for the ACT® Test, and the ACT® Test’s better method of data reporting.

There’s a huge caveat. My recommendation is only valid if a student accepts studying and taking the test is still his or her responsibility.

What are your thoughts? Did you decide ACT or SAT? How did you decide, and what kind of difference, if any, do you think it made?