SAT to ACT Score Converter

Using the converter

Choose the direction, enter the score you actually hold, and read the band as well as the number. An SAT total is rounded to the nearest ten because that is how the test reports; an ACT composite is a whole number from 1 to 36.

The three rows on screen are the concorded row and the two either side. They are there because the interesting question is almost never "what is my concorded score" but "how far am I from the next one" — and on this table the answer is sometimes ten points and sometimes forty.

The section boxes are optional. They do two jobs: they check the arithmetic of the total or composite you typed, and they read the shape of the profile. They are not concorded separately.

• SAT total 400–1600, in ten-point steps, as the two sections add
• ACT composite 1–36, the average of English, Math and Reading since the 2025 enhanced test
• ACT Science is optional, reported separately, and averaged with Math into the STEM score
• Published concordance rows run from ACT 11 to ACT 36 — nothing below that is extrapolated here

What a concordance actually is

It is not a formula. College Board and ACT ran a joint study on students who had taken both tests and matched the score points that the same proportion of that group reached. That is why the relationship is lumpy: an SAT band of 1200 to 1220 all concords to ACT 25, while ACT 27 pulls in everything from 1260 to 1290.

It says these two scores placed students similarly in that study. It does not say a student holding one would have earned the other, because the tests reward different things — and this is where a lot of ill-advised test switching comes from.

The 2018 tables replaced everything before them, and both organisations named them the single source of reference for applicants after autumn 2018. Two things have moved underneath since. The SAT went digital and stayed on the same 400–1600 scale, and the ACT was enhanced in 2025 with science leaving the composite. ACT reports the enhanced composite on the same 1 to 36 scale and says the distributions are consistent with the legacy composite. If a newer joint table is published after this page's date, the university's own admissions page will name the one it uses.

What this deliberately does not do

It does not predict a score. A concorded ACT 29 is not a forecast that this student would sit the ACT and get a 29; it is a statement about where an SAT 1340 placed students in one study. Anyone deciding to switch tests on that basis should sit a full practice paper of the other test first, which costs an afternoon and answers the question properly.

It does not extrapolate below the published rows. The table stops at ACT 11, and so does this. A tool that quietly continues the pattern down to ACT 4 is drawing a line through no data.

It does not concord sections. The section boxes check your arithmetic and describe the profile — they do not produce a section-level equivalent, and neither does a superscore. Universities that superscore build the total from your own sittings of one test; there is no official route from an SAT superscore to an ACT one.

Where students go wrong

The commonest error is treating a small SAT gain as a wasted one. On this table, moving from 1190 to 1200 is worth a whole ACT point, while moving from 1200 to 1220 is worth nothing at all in ACT terms. The bands are uneven, and where a student sits inside one changes what the next ten points buy.

The second is quoting an old table. Concordances published before 2018 are still circulating and still being pasted into forum answers; both organisations retired them. If a chart does not date itself, that is reason enough to leave it.

The third is planning around a science score. It was reasonable advice for years that a strong science-reasoning student should favour the ACT. Since 2025 the composite is English, Math and Reading, and science, if taken, is reported on its own and folded into the STEM score. The advice needs updating, and so does the revision plan built on it.