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Last week, the ACT announced a host of test changes to come into effect in April and September of next year for the digital and paper versions of the test, respectively. The key changes are:

• The Science section will be optional and reported separately. The new Composite score will be the average of the English, Reading, and Math section scores.
  
• The English, Math, and Reading sections will have fewer questions.
  
• The Reading passages will be shortened.
  
• In every section, the time allotted per question will increase.
  

The ACT’s rationale for these changes is to “offer students more choice and flexibility” and to “make the testing experience more manageable.” In this stated purpose, the ACT is echoing the logic of the CollegeBoard in its 2022 announcement of the new Digital SAT, which purports to offer a “less stressful” and more “student-friendly” experience.

Given the similarities in the tests’ changes, we can expect that students’ early experience with the new ACT will follow patterns we’ve seen with the Digital SAT. And that experience, contrary to the CollegeBoard’s messaging, has in fact often been more frustrating for students, particularly those aiming for 99th+ percentile scores.

With this in mind, here’s our guidance regarding the ACT’s upcoming changes for students who are in the test prep process or starting it soon:

• Rising 11th graders can stick with their current prep program. If you have a rising junior who hasn't started prep yet, though, please get in touch with us ASAP to ensure they can conclude their prep process before these changes take place. You can just reply to this email, and we'll arrange your student's diagnostic exams and tutoring.
• Rising 10th graders should plan on diagnostic exams around winter break to determine the right test for them, but they should probably expect to prepare for the ACT.
  
• Rising 9th graders and younger do not need to worry about this change yet. More data and study materials will be accessible by the time they begin college admissions test prep.
  

Why can changes to make tests “easier” have the paradoxical effect of making the test prep process more challenging? The reason lies in the specific scoring methodology of standardized tests and the requirements of effective prep regimens. We’ve asked one of our resident ACT/SAT experts, Michael Bergen, to explain the state of these tests, the effects of the changes on students’ scores, and what students and families can expect. Here’s the deep dive from Michael:

The Digital SAT: Still a Work in Progress

While many were optimistic about the convenience and accessibility of the Digital SAT, its first administrations this year have revealed a few notable issues:

• Steeper scoring scales: Fewer questions mean a harsher scale and more variance overall, and the non-linear scale means a few missed questions at the top (say, between 0 and 2) decrease a student’s score more than the same number of misses (say, between 8 and 10) in the middle. As a result, the test requires a level of perfectionism that students are finding harder to exhibit on any given administration, and the need for mastery here can lengthen the prep process.
• Lack of predictive practice material: Currently, the College Board’s Bluebook app offers six full-length Digital SATs for practice (the ACT, by contrast, has 66), and those practice tests’ scales do not align with those from official administrations. Students’ results on actual administrations have frequently underperformed relative to their Bluebook practice test scores, often by 100 points or more. The disparity in difficulty between math sections on practice and real tests was significant enough that it was covered by Forbes. Until the College Board releases more material that can accurately predict a student’s likely range, the Digital SAT will remain a wild card.
• Minimal data reporting: Further complicating prep for the Digital SAT is the lack of data students get from their official tests. Not only can students not see the questions they missed, score reports also do not indicate how many questions were missed, the distribution of misses across modules, or granular detail about the question types of their misses. This information is crucial for making study adjustments for subsequent administrations, and it is simply absent at this point.

The New ACT: Reformatting Without Reinvention

Because of the nature of its current scales and because it is not drastically changing its core sections, the ACT will likely continue to be the right choice for most students even after the implementation of the announced changes. Here’s more detail on why:

• Less impact on scoring scales: Among the ACT’s changes, the largest cuts will be to the English section (shortened from 75 questions to 50) and Math (from 60 questions to 45). Unlike the SAT, though, the ACT has room to make these cuts without significantly impacting scale; a typical ACT scale, for example, contains stretches in which a difference of 13 questions only results in a scaled difference of 4 points on both English and Math. The median question difficulty may need to increase in order for smaller raw score differences to be meaningful, but in theory these changes are less likely to affect the scoring scales to the degree seen with the Digital SAT.
• Ample prep material: With the exception of those for the Reading section, the ACT’s announced changes likely do not pertain to the fundamental content or structure of the test’s questions. For three quarters of the test, then, it is primarily the time per question that will change. Furthermore, coaching students to prep with a changed time per question is a straightforward adjustment to make for an experienced and conscientious tutor. As such, the bulk of existing test forms and other prep material should still provide reliable practice material for students in the basic experience and test scoring, ensuring that students will have sufficient accurate practice before sitting for their official tests.
• Option to test on paper: While the Digital SAT can now only be taken on computer, students will have the option to take the updated ACT digitally or on paper. Testing on paper may offer the advantage of being immune to a phenomenon called the “screen inferiority” which shows that people have a harder time comprehending text they read on a screen than on a page (particularly dense, academic text).

In the months to come, we’ll learn more about the changes to the ACT even as the Digital SAT—hopefully—works through its early issues. As new information comes to light, we’ll update our guidance to help all our students reach their goals. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.