Close to Home: Don't make mistake of only taking the SAT

If you grew up in California, there's a very good chance that you never heard about the ACT when you were in high school. For many years, another college admissions test, the SAT, has been the test of choice for California students applying to college.

I grew up on the East Coast and even I had never heard mention of the ACT until I was out of high school.

Lately, there's been a big change: The number of California students taking the ACT has increased dramatically. Since this is only a recent trend, it's completely understandable that many California families have misconceptions about the ACT. For example, many families don't know that more students across the nation now take the ACT than the SAT. In addition, some families do not know that colleges generally accept either the ACT or SAT, whichever score is higher. Most importantly, many families do not know that for a large number of students, the ACT is easier than the SAT.

The ACT is not a perfect test. When I prepare students for the ACT, I tell them three things: First, the science section is certainly not a comprehensive test of what students learn in science in high school; second, there's a tremendous amount of time pressure on the ACT (many students do not finish the math, reading and science sections); third, often the reading section is merely a scavenger hunt - find a person's name or a specific phrase from a question and the answer is sitting there completely out in the open in the passage.

Yet it is exactly these flaws that make it so easy to change ACT scores. Once my students learn how to handle the scavenger hunt on the reading section, how it's much more efficient to start with the questions rather than the charts on the science section and how it's better to drop a few hard questions in order to take extra time on the easier questions on the math section, ACT scores can really zoom.

There's also a new pattern: More colleges are starting to superscore the ACT. If you don't know the term, superscoring means that colleges choose the highest individual section scores from different tests a student has taken. In other words, if a student scores high on the English and math sections on a first ACT and high on the reading and science sections on a second ACT, some colleges would use the English and math scores from the first test and the reading and science scores from the second test. This means it is completely to a student's advantage to keep taking the ACT until he/she reaches her highest overall score and highest superscore.

So many California students make a big mistake: They only take the SAT. Smart California students are now often taking both the SAT and ACT to first determine which is the easier test for them and then taking that test over and over again to maximize superscores.

Just remember what I tell my students: Taking the ACT could be the ticket to better colleges.

David Benjamin Gruenbaum, along with his wife, Heather, co-own the private education company, Ahead of the Class in Santa Rosa. Gruenbaum teaches SAT and ACT classes at Cardinal Newman and Maria Carrillo High Schools.