The ACT is Changing

Today, the ACT® announced that starting in April of 2025 their digital version of the test will be changed in two significant ways: the structure will be updated (to give students more time per question), and the “Science” section will be optional.

Note: the paper test will remain the same until September 2025 (at which point it too will reflect these changes).

Updated Structure

More Time Per Question

The change that all students will likely appreciate most is that they will now have more time per question — not only that, but Math questions will have four (instead of the current five) answer choices, which can also speed up solving them if students are testing answers.

There are two difficult aspects to the ACT:

1. Learning all the fundamental content and skills evaluated on the exam (the grammar rules, rhetorical skills, mathematics, reading analysis, data analysis, etc).
2. The speed at which students need to work in order to answer all the questions. The test was (until now) designed so that the average student would not be able to finish the Math, Reading, and Science sections within the allotted time.

With more time per question, one of the hardest aspects of the ACT will be diminished or even eliminated. In contrast, the SAT® gave and still gives more time per question, but that doesn’t tend to matter: the questions are significantly harder and more abstract, so more time per question does not have much benefit unless a student significantly runs out of time on the ACT (which will likely no longer be the case).

I think the ACT will inevitably be forced to make the questions harder in order to balance out the fact that the test necessarily becomes easier if students have more time per question. Assuming that’s the case, I still think the change is beneficial: students don’t like the feel of being rushed, even if their score isn’t any higher when they have more time for harder questions. When students don’t finish a section, they feel dumb. So, in the long-term, the experience of taking the ACT will likely be improved because students will be less rushed on the test.

Integrated Experimental Section

Additionally, the 20-minute 5th section of the test (the experimental section that doesn’t count toward a student’s score but is instead solely used by the ACT to test out new questions to help build new exams) will be rolled into the new ACT.

The experimental section being rolled into the real test sections is both good and bad:

• Most students do not try on the fifth section (because they know it doesn’t impact their score), and thus the ACT was limited in its capacity to accurately test out questions in order to build the highest quality exams. For instance, of the 98 questions on the digital SAT, only 90 of the questions actually count toward a student’s score — the other 8 are experimental questions (which students are unaware of) that are solely used to help build new SAT exams. So, by rolling the experimental questions in with the real questions, the ACT will get better data on the difficulty and quality of new test questions and be able to build new tests that more consistently, fairly, and accurately evaluate a student’s score. This improvement in quality (on an already high-quality exam) is wonderful: the more consistent the exam, the more a student’s hard work is likely to pay off (nothing is more deflating than scoring a 32 consistently in practice and then scoring a 30 on test day solely because the curve on that day was incorrectly steep for the difficulty of the exam — variability in test-taking performance is already a significant factor, so anything that lessens scores variability is a welcome change.
• Although future tests will likely be of even higher quality with more accurate performance on the experimental questions, fewer questions on any exam necessitate that each question contributes to a larger percentage of a student’s overall score. For instance, all the sections are scored out of 36 possible points, so each of the seventy-five questions on the English section is only worth about half of a point. But, now that the English section is only scored out of 40 questions, each question is worth almost one full point, so each question has twice the impact on a student’s score (there will be 50 questions on the English section, but 10 of these will be experimental questions, so students’ scores will only be calculated from 40 of the 50 questions). A score based on about half as many qustions negates the benefit of a higher quality exam. Yes, the exams will be more accurately designed and curved, but a student’s personal performance will vary on any given day: a few silly mistakes will have twice the impact on a student’s score now, but so would a few lucky guesses.

Outcome: a higher quality exam means less variability in test scores; fewer questions mean more variability in students’ test scores because having a good or bad day has an amplified impact. So, on the whole, I think it will be mostly a wash: the pros will likely equally balance out the cons here.

Optional “Science” Section

Making the “Science” section optional is welcome and brilliant. Here’s why.

A Welcome Change

First, the “Science” section was named incorrectly. How many students have chosen not to take the ACT because it has a so-called “Science” section? Countless. Incorrectly naming this section probably cost the ACT a billion dollars (or more) over its 70 year history.

Instead, the “Science” section should have been named: “Reading Graphs and Tables.” That’s more accurate and less scary.

Granted, the content it tests is great. It is legitimately helpful, especially in such a digital and data centric age, to be able to accurately read graphs and tables and to draw logical conclusions from the data.

The biggest problem with the “Science” section (even if it was correctly named) is the inconsistency of the curves on that section. Best strategy for the “Science” section: get better and better at that section and then just take it again and again until you have a good day on a test that has a good curve. That’s annoying. It should have a more consistent curve.

Consider this Science section curve from April 2017:

Just five questions wrong and a student would score a 28 on the Science section — a top 10% score.

Compare that to the curve from April 2019:

Five questions wrong and a student would score a 34 on the Science section — a top 1% score.

That’s a very big difference, especially when the top 10% of the scale on a standardized test is actually where colleges would like to have the most accuracy when trying to select the most academically prepared students.

So, making the Science section (the least consistent and thus least accurate section) of the ACT optional is a welcome change.

Brilliant

The SAT is 2 hours and 14 minutes long. The ACT was 2 hours and 55 minutes long. The shorter test was one significant advantage that the SAT had over the ACT, which the ACT has helped to neutralize now that (without the optional Science section) the tests will be about the same length.

Granted, the top schools will still likely require students to take the ACT with the Science section and to submit that score, but the students applying to the top schools generally aren’t going to pick the SAT over the ACT just because the SAT is a bit shorter. So who does a shorter test appeal most to? The average student. And the average colleges are more likely to accept an ACT score without the optional Science section score, so the average student applying to the average college likely won’t need to take the Science section, thereby making the SAT and ACT essentially equal in length for the average student and neutralizing that advantage that the SAT (briefly) had.

Some Considerations

The downside to the change is the uncertainty. For instance, every time the SAT has changed, it has not gone well. Students found that out yet again in March of this year when the SAT had previously published four “official” practice tests that turned out to be easier than the real tests. From the data we have gathered from students taking the “official” practice tests and then the real tests without prep, students tend to underperform their practice test scores by about 50 points. And, the SAT might not be done making adjustments to its test and curve (it took about two years after their last redesign in 2016 until the test became predictable in content and curve). The same will likely play itself out with the ACT.

What Should Students Do?

The paper version won’t change until September 2025. So, for rising juniors, they don’t need to worry about the changes — virtually all current rising juniors will be done with prep and with testing before the changes occur. Long-term, if you are a betting person, there’s a good chance the ACT will become a better bet: with more time per question, the ACT will become a better fit for more students. And, we’ll see how colleges react to requiring the optional Science section or not; if they choose to no longer assess students on that section, then the ACT will again have neutralized an advantage the SAT had (because the ACT would then be the same length and less intimidating to students).

In sum, the changes to the ACT are likely to have no effect (if a student was already a better fit for the ACT and/or if top colleges still require ACT Science section scores) or be beneficial (a better testing experience of not being rushed and potentially not having to take a Science section).

No likely downsides but some possible upsides? I’ll take it.

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