What Is Expected From The Transition From the SAT To The ACT?
By Britanny Soto-Martinez and Paris Tran, December 2, 2024 for The Signature
Dr. Tony Sanders, the State Superintendent of Education, from the Illinois State Board of Education released a newsletter titled “Transitioning to the ACT,” on May 14, 2024 announcing the state’s decision to switch from the SAT to the ACT for standardized testing in the 2024-2025 school year based on three factors: technical specifications, commitment to diversity, and price. The higher overall scores in these areas have allowed them to meet state requirements, and it will be beneficial according to the Illinois Learning Standards.
First introduced by the College Board in 1926, the SAT was originally designed to assess students' college readiness through a multiple-choice entrance exam that measures a student’s knowledge of their math, reading, and writing skills. The digital SAT takes roughly two and a half hours to complete with a reading and writing section that takes 64 minutes, and a math section that takes 70 minutes.
The SAT has been the preferred college admission test in CPS for many years to measure academic preparedness. However, a sudden but significant transition is underway as CPS adopts the ACT as their new test of choice. This change now leaves students wondering: Why the sudden switch? How will it impact college admissions and the students’ future? And what do we do now?
An article written this summer, titled “ACT Rather Than SAT, Illinois Education Officials Decide For State High School Assessment”, written by Peter Hancock and published by the Chicago Sun Times, explains how like the SAT, the ACT is another entrance exam that colleges and universities look at as an alternative test to the SAT. Unlike the SAT, the ACT is more curriculum based as it is designed to measure what students have learned in high school. The main difference between the two tests is that the ACT includes a science section, testing students’ abilities to interpret and understand scientific data, overall making it a longer testing time.
The transition to the ACT introduces students to new challenges, particularly with the additional science section and a faster-paced structure. In an article published in 2023 titled, “Top Impediments to Achieving High SAT/ACT Scores,” Alliance Tutoring mentions that many students who have already been preparing for the SAT now face the challenge of adapting to the new format, mastering skills for a new section, and managing time more effectively. Moreover, educators are feeling the impact as they adjust their teaching strategies, lesson plans, and help students navigate the longer reading passages and science interpretation. Educators are pressured to provide additional support to ensure students can grasp the material and are equipped with the necessary skills needed to excel in the new test.
Mr. Mirek, an English teacher at John Hancock College Prep who is offering an ACT preparation for the Reading and English sections, explains his mixed emotions that have arisen from the shift of the SAT to ACT.
“As an English teacher, the passages for the SAT were nice because they were nice and short, and there was only one question attached to those passages. And I felt like students learned that and were able to navigate that fairly successfully.”
However, the shift has now allowed him to have different opinions on the ACT. “The ACT, when it comes to the reading section, is a long passage, and then there’s 10 questions that are attached to the passage.” As a result of this, he explains that his job is now to “teach them how to navigate a long passage” in order to be able to effectively understand and answer the questions that they are being asked.
This new shift has also come with its challenges in both the preparation and the actual test-taking process. Due to the test’s shift from online to on paper, students will no longer have access to all the geometrical formulas or tools like Desmos that could be of assistance during the math section. According to Mr. Mirek, mentors, including himself, worry about the longer readings and larger variety of questions that come with these passages. Lastly, they have concerns about the addition of the science component because not all students are exposed to these graphs and pieces of data, so they might have difficulty reading and interpreting them.
Despite this, Mr. Mirek mentioned the solutions that have already been formulated by the ACT groups, and those include to focus more on giving students the equations needed and possibly integrating them into higher levels of math, explain how to navigate through each of the passages in order to properly and effectively understand the text, and lastly exposing them to more graphs and data to become familiar with it. With these solutions, Mirek positively believes that students have the capacity to excel on the ACT.
Mr. Mirek explains that students should prepare as much as possible and “ask a lot of questions” in order to really learn and understand. He mentions that regardless of the transition, students can be very successful on the ACT and it can open up doors to their future options.
Hayden Scuito, a current Senior at John Hancock College Prep, already took both the ACT and SAT. She says, “To prepare you can even watch Tiktok videos. That's what I did for the ACT and SAT, or like YouTube videos. Again, you don't have to stress so much about one subject because you have three others that are worth 75%. So if you're not the best in math, make sure you do good in things like reading, English, or science.”
John Hancock College Preparatory’s freshmen, sophomores, and juniors will be taking the Pre-ACT on December 5, and juniors will take the official ACT in April of 2025.