We teach our children kindness and honesty. Part of being honest is not to cheat others and not to cheat on tests, especially a high-stakes test like the SAT and ACT. What would happen if a student is caught cheating on one of these tests? Consequences can be severe, including a cancellation of scores, a ban from future tests, and potential notification to the student’s parents, high school, and colleges they applied to. In some cases, cheating can lead to more serious consequences, particularly if it involves fraud or forgery. Besides this, being caught cheating is stressful and emotionally challenging. These consequences are justifiable. Cheating is wrong.
So why are the test prep companies cheating? You may be wondering how they are cheating. This is best explained with an anecdotes.
The SAT and ACT have always been very competitive. They have changed their tests and their test dates in the past to win more market share. This is especially high-stakes when these companies try to win a state like Arizona which, according to College Raptor, has about 50% of test-takers taking the SAT and about 50% taking the ACT.
When the digital SAT was first administered domestically, students complained that the practice released by the College Board was easier and that they scored higher on those practice tests than they did on test day. Now that the ACT is also changing, we are finding the same thing—students are scoring about 3 points higher (which is equal to about 105 SAT points) in their practice than they are on test day.
I can’t ignore this correlation. It seems both the SAT and ACT are giving the appearance of ease in the practice before each new test is administered to win more market share. While my advice is usually to take a mock test of each, my advice (until the first real new ACT results are released) is to stick with the SAT.
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