I’d say more people take the SAT because they’ve heard more about it. Here where I’m from, though, the ACT is a bigger deal, and it surprises me how many people I talk to who never took the SAT– I took both, which I recommend because some people naturally do better on one or the other and you generally just need to take them both to find out.

The SAT is technically called an “aptitude” test, while the ACT is an “achievement” test. You might want to take the ACT over the SAT, though, because the ACT is much more straightforward. The SAT tests a particular type of analytical reasoning that doesn’t come naturally to even some very smart people—and a lot of it is in the way they ask the questions, which can be confusing. The ACT is, as I said, more straightforward and involves less abstract reasoning and more concrete knowledge. The ACT does cover a wider area: it has English, math, reading, and science reasoning (as opposed to the SAT’s critical reading, writing, and math). But the science reasoning is NOT just “science”—it tests how well you can understand scientific information, charts, and graphs more than it tests what you actually know about science. Another advantage of the ACT over the SAT is that the ACT does not test vocabulary as much as the SAT does. The SAT vocabulary takes up a large portion of the critical reading section, and is a huge problem to study for and to do for many people who speak nothing but English and have their entire lives—of course I don’t know about your particular situation, but I imagine that it might be even harder for you if you’re a non-native speaker. 🙂

You can find out more about the ACT here: http://www.actstudent.org/ , and about the SAT here: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/prep_one/prep_one.html .

Good luck!