As we saw in our post on admissions tests in pop culture, for much of their history, the ACT has been a less-well-known afterthought when it comes to the choice to take ACT or SAT. This has been especially true on the coasts.

However, we got new information on Sunday, and Mindspire is here to help you decide whether ACT would be a good choice for your student, especially if they are a rising Junior or younger, and this information will directly affect them.

TLDR; a shorter test and Science goes optional

The new test will be closer to two hours than three hours. According to Janet Godwin, CEO of the ACT, this will be accomplished by taking out a total of 44 questions across the three remaining required sections. If stamina was one of your concerns about choosing the ACT, this pace will now allow students to have “more time to answer each question thoughtfully,” according to Godwin.

Additionally, the Science section — a section which had no real exact analogue in the SAT or in students’ science courses, but instead primarily tests logical reasoning and data analysis through science passages — will become completely optional, as the Writing section is today.

How will the new score be calculated?

Right now, the ACT is a mathematical average or mean of all of a student’s four sections. Let’s break down hypothetical subscores and the resulting score:

• English: 36
• Math: 31
• Reading: 35
• Science: 29

Adding these up and dividing by 4 would result in 32.75. This would be reported as a 33. (Conversion to the SAT is not exact, but percentile-wise, this is a 98th percentile. That would roughly be equivalent to a 1430, give or take 20 points, but it’s best to look at students’ desired colleges’ reported mean scores for each exam.)

What happens to the same student under the new test if she skips Science and takes the other three sections?

• English: 36
• Math: 31
• Reading: 35

She brought her score up to a 34. Some colleges, that could make the difference between a half and full scholarship, or admission or the waitlist. What this percentile will be in the new test remains to be seen, but we predict the new bell curve will be similar to the current one.

Therefore, our recommendation is for any students who avoided the ACT because of the Science section to consider taking it with only the three new core sections come April 2025.

Unknown unknowns

This is the extent of what has been announced: any further speculation is just that. (And students prepping for August 2024-April 2025 test dates will be under the status quo.) But it seems likely that just as the digital SAT changed format to better reflect what stakeholders saw as most predictive for college success, these changes to ACT are intended to help students achieve a score that is representative of their abilities.

We can help — Reach out if you’re considering ACT in addition to or instead of SAT

It’s human nature to default to what we know, and the ACT only became nationally popular a decade ago. With the switch to an all-digital format, SAT is getting the attention of many students and their parents. However, at Mindspire, we’re seeing that above-average scorers are MORE likely to plateau in their score on the digital SAT. If you’re open to a math section that covers more topic (but has fewer killer-level difficulty problems), and fewer but longer reading passages, you should consider the ACT as a tool in your toolbox.

There are no longer any colleges which would take only the SAT but not the ACT. Prepare for the test that best suits YOUR abilities, not just the test that was historically more popular based on your time zone or what your aunt said at Thanksgiving one year about Science. Anecdotes are not data, and we will share more as we learn more.

Reach out if you have any questions about the ACT — our tutors are fully vetted to be able to tackle either exam.

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