Last updated: October 2026
The short version
Concordance tables map bands of scores onto bands of scores. A 1350 SAT total sits in a band that the official table maps to an ACT composite of 29; reading the same table the other way, an ACT composite of 29 corresponds to roughly 1340 on the SAT. Those two numbers are not equal, and that is not a mistake — it is what happens when you describe a relationship between two different tests instead of a mathematical identity.
Where the tables come from
The 2018 concordance tables published by ACT and the College Board were built from students who took both tests. For each score on one test, the researchers asked: among students who scored this, what did they typically score on the other? That produces a mapping between score points, and because the underlying data is a distribution rather than a line, several adjacent scores collapse onto the same point.
Two consequences follow directly from that method. First, the tables are symmetric in intention but not perfectly symmetric in output — 1350 → 29 and 29 → 1340 coexist. Second, the table describes students who took both tests, a group that is not identical to all test takers, which is why the tables are described as concordance rather than equivalence.
Concordance is not a prediction
This is the most common misunderstanding. A conversion does not tell you what you would have scored on the other test. It tells you how a score you already have compares with scores other students obtained on a different instrument. The tests differ in ways no conversion captures:
- Pacing: the ACT gives less time per question across most sections.
- Science reasoning: the ACT has a dedicated section that is mostly data interpretation, not prior science knowledge.
- Maths depth: the SAT leans towards problem-solving and data analysis; the ACT reaches further into trigonometry and matrices, though it stays shallower overall.
- Wrong-answer policy: neither test penalises guessing today, but the historical SAT penalty still appears in old prep material and confuses score expectations.
A student whose strength is slow, careful reading often scores above their converted number on the SAT; a student who thrives under time pressure often does the reverse on the ACT. The conversion simply cannot see that.
How the section-level tables work
There are separate tables for sections, and they behave the same way — bands in, bands out. A SAT Maths score of 700 maps to an ACT Maths score of 30 in the published tables, and a combined Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score of 650 maps into the 57 range when compared with the ACT English plus Reading combination. If you are comparing sections, compare like with like: SAT Maths against ACT Maths, and the SAT reading/writing pair against ACT English and Reading together.
Three different things people call "equivalent"
| Concept | What it compares | What it is good for |
|---|---|---|
| Percentile rank | Your score against everyone who took the same test | Knowing where you stand within one test |
| Concordance | Your score against the other test, via students who took both | Comparing your own two scores after taking both |
| College middle 50% | Admitted students at one specific college | Judging whether a score is competitive at that college |
Conversations about "my SAT is like a 32 ACT" usually mix all three. A score can sit at the 90th percentile of one test, convert to a solid number on the other, and still fall below a particular college's middle 50% — those are separate facts, and only the third one is about admissions.
What colleges actually do
Most colleges accept either test and assess the score you submitted; they do not run a conversion behind the scenes, and they publish middle-50% ranges per test rather than a single converted scale. A smaller number of schools superscore, meaning they combine your best sections across sittings of the same test — superscoring across the SAT and the ACT is much rarer. Where a college states a policy, that policy beats any conversion table you find online, including ours.
How to use a conversion without being misled
- Stay in the band. If the table says 29, read it as "29, possibly 30 at the top of the band", not as 29.4.
- Round-trip it. Convert your SAT to the ACT and back. If you land within about 10–20 points of where you started, you are using the table correctly.
- Never convert forwards to make a decision about which test to take — take a timed practice test of each instead.
- Compare sections separately if you are deciding where to focus, and remember that a composite hides a weak section.
Do the conversion properly
Our SAT to ACT converter implements the published 2018 tables in both directions, including the section-level tables, and shows the band rather than pretending to more precision than the data supports. If you want to see what a raw answer count turns into before any concordance is involved, the SAT raw score calculator and ACT raw score calculator handle the scaling with editable conversion curves. More background reading is collected on the guides index.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an exact SAT to ACT conversion?
No. The official concordance tables map bands of scores onto bands of scores — for example a 1350 SAT lands in a band that the 2018 table maps to an ACT composite of 29, and an ACT 29 maps back to about 1340. Two students with the same SAT total can legitimately sit in different places inside a band, so the honest answer is always a range.
What ACT score is a 1350 SAT?
The 2018 ACT/College Board concordance places a 1350 SAT total at an ACT composite of 29. Reading the table in the other direction, an ACT composite of 29 corresponds to a SAT total of about 1340. Both figures come from students who took both tests, not from a formula.
Do colleges convert my score themselves?
Most colleges accept either test and evaluate the score you submitted; they do not usually run a conversion. Some publish a middle-50% range for each test separately, which is why a converted number can look inconsistent with a school's published range. When a policy matters, read the college's own admissions page rather than a conversion.
Should I pick a test based on a conversion?
No. A conversion tells you how two already-taken scores compare, not how you would perform on the other test. Take a full timed practice test of each under real conditions, compare the percentiles those practice scores fall into, and choose from that — the ACT and SAT differ in pacing, science reasoning and maths depth in ways a conversion cannot capture.