PEORIA, Ill. (25NewsNow) -- Big changes are coming for high school students across Illinois as they prepare for college applications.
For years, students have taken the SAT as part of the state’s standardized testing requirement, but the state is shifting to the ACT.
“It’s going to be good”, Peoria Sylvan Learning Center Director Shawna Stewart said. “I think it’s going to be better just with all the changes that ACT is laying out with giving students more time with less questions. I think it’s good that they’re going to make science a separate score from the reading the English and the math.”
A big difference between the two tests is that the ACT includes a science and optional essay section.
The tests are also scored on different scales. The ACT is scored on a scale of 1 to 36 while the SAT is scored on a scale of 400 to 1600.
“The SAT is adaptive, so in order to unlock the harder part of the second module for both the reading, writing and the math, you have to do really well on the first part, whereas the ACT, It’s not adaptive. It’s going to be the same throughout taking the test. ”
Due to the shift, it is important to know how to best prepare. Normal Community High School junior student Daniel Knoll said a local test prep center helped him strategize with the more challenging parts of the test.
“They have ideas of how to work it out, and then they show me different ways of doing things and just learning how to do them better,” Knoll said.
