Standardized testing is one of the most important things in the world for a high schooler preparing for college admissions.  It helps earn scholarships, awards and college acceptances.  Understandably, the testing season can be a stressful and fast-paced time. This year, the testing process in Illinois will be different.  Starting from the 2024-2025 school year, public schools in Illinois are transitioning from the SAT to the ACT.  In terms of college admissions, the SAT and ACT are typically accepted by all universities.  Both tests still assess and evaluate your reading, writing and math skills.  The grading scale for the SAT goes from zero to 1600 while the ACT is from zero to 36.  Yet, these tests have many important distinctions that make the ACT superior.

The ACT has a shorter testing time of two hours and 55 minutes, while the SAT is three hours and fourteen minutes.  The ACT is broken up into four shorter sections, which helps students reorient themselves and have more breaks. This differs from the SAT because it only has two longer sections.  The ACT also includes a science section, making the testing process much faster in the long run.  According to the Illinois State Board of Education, students won’t have to take a separate Illinois Science Assessment in their junior year anymore, taking away from overall testing time and making testing more convenient.  It also allows students who excel in STEM to prove it, in part, through their test scores.  As someone who aspires to major in something STEM-related in college, it allows me to show colleges my STEM score, which is intended to predict my future success in a STEM higher education program.

The score distributions of the ACT are also more advantageous for students who excel in Reading and English compared to the SAT.  25% of the ACT score comes from the Math section, 25% from the Science section and 50% from the English and Reading section.  On the other hand, half of the SAT score comes from Math and half comes from English and Reading.  While this is personally favorable for me and others who prefer Reading and English, it also pushes schools and students to focus more on Reading and Writing skills, which are important no matter which career you choose to pursue.  Niles West currently does not have very challenging English classes available for freshmen and sophomores, as our honors and regular classes are mixed for the first two years.  I hope more challenging coursework and classes will be available for underclassmen in the future to help them with the ACT.

Despite all this, the SAT has a few perks.  The SAT suite offers the National Merit Scholarship Test, or the PSAT/NMSQT.  Students take this test to become a National Merit Scholar and win $2,500 based on their scores, academics and essays.  Students can still take this outside of school, but it is harder to do so and makes it harder for students to access the test and consequently, the scholarship.

With all things considered, I am glad that Illinois public schools are switching to the ACT this year and I believe the switch to the ACT will benefit our schools in the long run.