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If your student took the December ACT, you may have already heard that something was different about the Math section. Students across the country reported an unusually difficult and time-consuming test, and when scores arrived, many came back lower than expected given prior practice results. The good news is that, now that the ACT has shown its hand, we have even more information to guide students toward success on the upcoming test dates. Furthermore, harder standardized tests, because they offer more possibility for distinction, favor top performers. For families in the middle of testing season, though, the December ACT Math section may have understandably raised an urgent question: is the ACT getting harder, and what should we do?

Here's what we know, what it means, and how to move forward.

What happened in December?

The December ACT Math section was unprecedentedly advanced. While the ACT doesn't release full copies of December tests, feedback from our students and other sources made it clear: the difficulty spiked, and the curve didn't fully compensate. Even well-prepared test-takers were left with scores that didn't reflect their abilities.

What’s changed in that Math section?

Starting with some background: the Enhanced ACT, launched nationally in September, shortened the Math section from 60 questions to 45. Analysis of the new content distribution shows that, by and large, the questions that have been removed are the easier, earlier ones—essentially, the test authors have lopped off the first 15 "warm-up" problems that gave students early momentum and quick points. The result is a section that begins at a higher difficulty level and stays there. Students who prepped with practice tests from even a year ago may find themselves caught off guard by how few genuinely easy questions remain in the latest version the ACT.

December's test, though, went further still, featuring a higher-than-usual concentration of advanced topics—linear regression, 3-D geometry, conic sections, and polynomial graphing, to name a few—in their most challenging forms. Moreover, the scale of the test was as steep as ever; the increased difficulty wasn’t reflected in the scoring. Whether this represents the new baseline or an anomaly remains to be seen. But we shouldn't assume the difficulty is going away.

What should families do now?

The key is to overprepare, both in terms of content difficulty and section pacing. Scoring well on official practice material isn't sufficient if future administrations continue to raise the bar.

A few specific recommendations:

Build problem-solving flexibility. December's hardest questions were known concepts in unfamiliar forms that required more processing time. By drilling problem sets harder than the test itself and working with materials that emphasize adaptability over rote patterns, students can develop the agility to handle whatever the ACT presents. We saw the smallest score variance with students we'd prepared this way.

Focus on time efficiency. Problem solving rates vary significantly across difficulty—sometimes the seven hardest problems take longer than the eighteen easiest. Students who insist on working straight through in order often run out of time before reaching questions they could have answered. Instead, students should move through the section strategically, securing manageable points first and returning to time-intensive problems with remaining time.

Consider digital testing with Desmos. Students taking the online ACT now have access to Desmos, the same powerful graphing tool that's proven valuable on the Digital SAT. The advantage is more modest on the ACT given its varied content (helpful on roughly 15% of questions), but for students whose Math score lags their other sections, mastering Desmos and testing digitally—even as part of a superscoring strategy—could provide an edge on linear geometry, systems of equations, and polynomial problems.

What about switching to the SAT?

We don’t recommend this shift yet. The reasons the ACT was the right choice for your student a few months ago are still generally true, particularly its more generous scaling at top percentiles and its linear (non-adaptive) format. The English and Reading sections remained stable in December. And the advanced Math content, while challenging, is prepare-able.

We have also navigated students through similar changes over the past decade, during which the ACT has introduced—in fits and starts—increasingly advanced math material. If recent tests featured graphing circles and simple ellipses, then students should be prepared for hyperbolas and systems of conic sections ahead. We've navigated these shifts before by keeping our ears to the ground—including sending tutors into official tests regularly—and we'll continue to do so.

Looking ahead

The February 14th test date is fast approaching, and we'll be sending a tutor into that administration. Historically, when the ACT has an unusually difficult section, the following test date tends to self-correct with either more typical content or a more generous scale. We're cautiously optimistic. But we're also preparing our students as if December's difficulty is here to stay.