The ACT announced some upcoming changes to the ACT. There isn’t a ton of specific information available yet (especially in regards to accommodations), but I wanted to give a short rundown of what we know so far.
If you don’t have time to read all of the below, here’s the TL;TR version… the ACT is becoming shorter, and friends don’t let friends take the digital ACT. :-)
The most significant change is that the Science section will become optional, just like the writing. I predict that eventually STEM-focused majors and schools will require the score. Additionally, I foresee the Science section evolving to become a section that actually tests science knowledge, rather than just reading graphs and tables. This was partially confirmed by the ACT during a call in July when they confirmed that a passage with a focus on engineering will be included.
Moving to 3 mandatory sections means that the new composite score will be calculated by averaging just English, Math and Reading. Science will be reported separately. Colleges have not given any indication of how they will be super-scoring the old and new tests, but I predict that there will be minimal impact given the limited content changes to the test, which I’ll go through below.
The test will be offered to all students on national test dates in both digital and paper formats. Students can decide which they prefer, but I STRONGLY suggest that students avoid the digital format at all costs. More information about that is below.
Content and Structure Changes
English content will remain the same, with a focus on testing grammar. The number of questions will be reduced to 50 and students will have 35 minutes to complete the section. This change is very welcome since the current version has a lot of “bloat” meaning they test the same concepts A LOT!
Math content will remain the same, and students will be thrilled to hear that the “series” questions (the ones with 3 or 4 questions relating to a graph or table) will be going away. Word problems will be written to be less wordy, with less “fluff”. There will now also be 4 answer choices available, instead of 5. The number of questions is being reduced to 45, and students will have 50 minutes to complete the section.
Reading changes will help students a ton, as the number of questions will be reduced to 36 and the section's time will increase to 40 minutes. I suspect there will be some changes to the types of passages the ACT will select, and we may see some more difficult content and vocabulary introduced.
Finally, there will no longer be a “5th section” of experimental questions that did not count towards the section or composite scores. Instead, those “experimental” questions will be interspersed throughout the test, so students will not be aware of which ones in a section will count and which ones won’t. The English section will have 10 experimental questions, Math will have 4, and Reading will have 9. Although the ACT has announced those figures, I personally do not believe they will stay that way, so I expect to have to update them moving forward.
Timing of Rollout and Paper vs Digital
The ACT will roll out this new test structure for online testers in April 2025. I am very much not a fan of the online platform. I do not suggest anyone willingly take the digital ACT as long as a paper test is available.
The digital format is clunky and difficult to navigate, especially in the reading section. Toggling between questions causes scrolling issues, and there is a very known issue with lag times when moving between questions that cause major timing issues (basically the lag eats away at the extra time this new format is giving you!). The ACT is working on developing a new platform, but until that rolls out and is tested nationally, I would run far away from that format.
The paper version of the test will not change until the September 2025 test, so all current Juniors (class of 2026) need to finish testing by July 2025 so as not to be affected by the changes.
We do not have samples of the new test yet; however, the ACT has promised to release samples by early 2025. As I stated above, I don’t believe there will be major changes to the way questions are structured, so using current materials to prep will likely not be an issue.
Changes to Accommodations
I am very lucky to have a great relationship with the ACT accommodations department, and they have shared that they are currently not planning on adjusting available accommodations. There will still be a multiday accommodation over 3 days (one section per day) even with the shortened format. I do believe that, eventually, we will see some changes to how the multi-day format will be executed (giving 2 days instead if 3), but I do not foresee that happening in 2025.
As always, WRH College Prep is here to help. We are following all of these changes closely, so you don’t have to! Please reach out to us with any questions at info@wrhcollegeprep.com