Upcoming ACT Changes

In 2024, a Santa Monica-based private equity firm called Nexus Capital acquired the ACT, the first time that either the ACT or the SAT has been owned by a for-profit company. Immediately, the ACT announced a series of upcoming changes that seem to be designed to make the ACT more competitive with the digital SAT, which has become popular with students due to its shorter duration and more student-friendly format. Below are a summary of the upcoming ACT changes:

• The ACT will now be 2 hours rather than 3, mimicking the change to a shorter format for the SAT

• The ACT will now have fewer total questions and shorter passages on English and Reading

• The ACT Science section will now be optional and will not count towards the Composite Score 1-36

• The new ACT will be available on computer from April 2025 and on paper from September 2025

• The new ACT will NOT be adaptive, and the computer and paper formats will have the same content

It is important to realize that these changes leave students with many pressing questions, especially since the ACT has not released any sample tests in the new format. First, it remains to be seen whether the new computer-based format will be more comfortable for students, as the current computer-based ACT requires students to take the test on old PCs at public test centers rather than at school or using their own devices. Second, no one knows how top universities will treat the ACT Science test as optional – will students who choose to take ACT Science have an advantage? Could US colleges and universities, which have shown no preference for ACT or SAT in past decades, prefer the non-profit SAT to the for-profit ACT? Maybe.

Probably the biggest concern for students should be the lack of practice materials. Currently, the biggest advantage to choosing ACT over SAT is the vast trove of past exams, which have changed only modestly in format over the past 20 years. This advantage will become irrelevant with the launch of a completely new format. As such, Dragon Prep is advising students to avoid the ACT until we see more sample papers and learn more about how universities will regard the ACT in comparison to the SAT.

by Edward Dunnigan

8 November 2024