ACT and SAT Now Accepted Everywhere

It's now official -- every U.S. college or university that requires a standardized test score for admission now accepts scores from either the SAT or the ACT.

Harvey Mudd College, the engineering and technical school of the Claremont College Consortium, will begin accepting ACT scores for the first time this fall. Wake Forest University, another late adapter of the ACT, began accepting ACT scores for this year's admissions.

One of the main differences between the SAT and the ACT is that the writing component of the SAT is mandatory, while the ACT writing test is optional.

To date, most schools are not making much use of writing scores from either test in their admissions decisions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that when colleges do draw on a SAT or ACT writing sample to make an admissions decision, it's often to check whether an applicant wrote their own essays. An application that includes highly sophisticated essays but a barely literate SAT or ACT writing sample is going to raise a red flag.