How ACT overtook SAT as the top college entrance exam
The ACT has for the first time overtaken the SAT as the most popular college admissions exam by a margin of a few thousand students.
Look at how things changed over time (information from FairTest):
(bigstock)1986: 730,000 students took the ACT compared with 1,000,748 who took the SAT.
1996: 924,663 took the ACT;1,084,725 took the SAT.
2006: 1,206,455 took the ACT;1,465,744 took the SAT.
2011: 1,623,112 took the ACT; 1,647,123* took the SAT
2012: 1,666,017 took the ACT; 1,664,479* took the SAT
* Once it saw that the number of ACT-takers had grown larger, based on a historically consistent measure, the College Board revised the