Due to a new state requirement, more college-bound high school students are sending in ACT instead of SAT scores in North Carolina. UNC Wilmington admissions is still careful to not favor one score over the other.  

Marcio Moreno, UNCW associate director of admissions said a high score, on either test, does not guarantee a student will be accepted. Admissions weighs all aspects of student applications evenly, including the personal essay and GPA.

Moreno thought requiring all North Carolina juniors to take the ACT was a good idea because it’s easier to compare students when GPA scales vary from school to school.

North Carolina is entering the third year of requiring all high school juniors to take the ACT. The state only pays for each student to take the test once. Students who wish to repeat the test have to sign up and pay for it outside of school.  

Heather Craven, student services department chair at Wilmington’s Eugene Ashley High School, said that the SAT has traditionally been more popular than the ACT but both scores have always been equally accepted by four-year colleges and universities.

Craven also said the state adopted a new curriculum to go along with the ACT called the Common Core curriculum. The goal is to teach interdisciplinary concepts to create a global perspective, rather than keeping subjects separate. Craven is hesitant to embrace any standardized test though.

“I know that, for many of our students, a test is never going to show how bright they are. Or, it may not show how unengaged they are,” Craven said.”  “They may test really well because they’re good at that, their brain works that way, but they’re not really engaged in school.”

Craven believes hard work is a better indicator for college success than any standardized test score. 

Craven explained that the main difference between the two standardized tests is that the SAT is considered an aptitude test, showing how students apply knowledge they already have to problems on the test they haven’t encountered before, and the ACT is an achievement test, testing only what students have already been taught.

There is an even balance of students who do better on the ACT versus the SAT, Craven said, but because colleges typically report their freshman class’s average SAT scores and use it as a standard for the next wave of applicants, some students whose SAT scores aren’t competitive enough choose to send only ACT scores.