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Standardized tests.

thirtythree

Diamond Member
I've been looking around at admission info for some colleges and noticed that most of them accept either the ACT or SAT. Is this the norm these days? I also noticed that many require 3 SAT-II tests which I haven't even heard of until recently. How do I know which subject tests to take .. what is the difference between Mathematics I and II? Are the science tests like the Science Reasoning section on the ACT or more like AP tests?

Also, where can I find college rankings / info online? Thanks for the info.
 
where you wanna go to school? every college i've applied to required ACT or SAT. never heard of those other tests, but haven't applied anywhere for years either.
 
i took the math and english SAT-II tests during orientation to get credit... they weren't anything particularly hard

us news had rankings, but they're very unobjective in that they'll change the formula to make harvard, princeton, and yale the top 3 schools in the ranks.
 
Originally posted by: ElFenix
i took the math and english SAT-II tests during orientation to get credit... they weren't anything particularly hard

us news had rankings, but they're very unobjective in that they'll change the formula to make harvard, princeton, and yale the top 3 schools in the ranks.
I looked at usnews.com but you have to pay to get the full rankings anyway.
 
Originally posted by: chemos
where you wanna go to school? every college i've applied to required ACT or SAT. never heard of those other tests, but haven't applied anywhere for years either.
I don't know where I want to go to school yet. I know most colleges require the ACT or SAT but I thought they usually picked one or the other. All the colleges I looked at said either one will do.
 
The SAT is totally worthless. California has already phased it out and I know Texas is in the process of picking a replacement for it, or highly revamping it.
 
SAT II's are required for many selective colleges if you haven't taken the ACT. Most places that require them want writing, Math I or IIc (I believe the only difference is that IIc includes pre-calc while Ic only includes trig), and then one of your choice. They are far less important than the SAT I, I had pretty high SAT scores, but the SAT II's ranged from 65-75% percentile, but I still got into where I wanted to go. Basically, the only way to do well on them is to buy a review book and go through it, that way you'll catch all the things that you didn't go over in your class that made its way onto the SAT II. It basically measures who wants to cram, not any form of actually intelligence.
 
It seems like most prefer the SATs (except some California school...which don't believe in standardized testing or some such thing) over the ACTs. I know one person that took ACTs and not SATs, I know about 8-10 that took both the SATs and ACTs. If you take the SATs you'll be set.

It seems like the schools that require 3 SAT2 schools are some of the higher level ones. All schools like to see it, but only the better schools actually require them. Math1C has less advanced stuff than Math2C, however, you can get more problems wrong/omit more on 2C and get the same score as you would if you did better on 1C. The science tests are all multiple choice stuff - mostly qualitative and some simple quantitative stuff (like just to make sure you know the formulas and stuff - there is no written problem solving section). Also, you should take the Writing SAT2 - lots of schools like to see that.

Go to US News and World Reports' education section for college info.
 
Originally posted by: zippy
It seems like most prefer the SATs (except some California school...which don't believe in standardized testing or some such thing) over the ACTs. I know one person that took ACTs and not SATs, I know about 8-10 that took both the SATs and ACTs. If you take the SATs you'll be set.

It seems like the schools that require 3 SAT2 schools are some of the higher level ones. All schools like to see it, but only the better schools actually require them. Math1C has less advanced stuff than Math2C, however, you can get more problems wrong/omit more on 2C and get the same score as you would if you did better on 1C. The science tests are all multiple choice stuff - mostly qualitative and some simple quantitative stuff (like just to make sure you know the formulas and stuff - there is no written problem solving section). Also, you should take the Writing SAT2 - lots of schools like to see that.

Go to US News and World Reports' education section for college info.
Thanks for the info. US News only lets you see the top two of each ranking without paying (unless I am missing something). I don't see a lot of other info either .. ?
 
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