TL;DR: Students who are only worried about timing when taking the ACT should strongly consider choosing it as their preferred test.
The ACT organization announced on Monday, July 15th that it is changing the digital test’s format starting April 2025. The ACT paper test will remain the same until September 2025, after which it will likely change to the same format as the digital test.
How the ACT is changing in 2025:
fewer questions per section with shorter timed sections
Science section will be optional
integrated experimental section instead of a 5th section
What’s good about these changes?
The biggest concern students have when they work on the ACT is that there is not enough time per question, especially in the Math, Reading, and Science sections. One minute per question in the math simply wasn’t enough time, even if a student banked up time from earlier, easier questions. For the Reading section, a student was expected to read a passage in 2-3.5 minutes, lest they run out of time on the questions. Sometimes we would need to strategically sacrifice a few questions or even a whole passage to increase a student’s scores! I’m hoping that won’t be needed anymore.
The second concern was comparing the length of the ACT to that of the current Digital SAT. Most students would rather take a test that’s 2 hours and 15 minutes versus a test that’s 2 hours and 55 minutes. I don’t blame them! Shortening the sections should help with this issue.
A final complaint from many students was that the Science section was simply too hard. Not only is it at the end of the test so most students’ endurance was shot, but also it had so many purposefully complex and unique graphs and tables. Now that the Science will be optional, more students should feel comfortable giving the ACT a try.
What’s bad about these changes?
Just because someone says something is optional doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. Likely, competitive colleges will still require the Science section. Transitions are also usually messy - since we don't have as many practice materials to work with, we don't know what to expect and scoring curves can be uncalibrated.
Why is it changing?
The ACT has evolved throughout the years to meet the needs of learners (and likely to compete with the SAT). This isn't the first time the ACT has changed, and it won't be the last.
What should students do?
If you have a rising senior, they should continue with their current plan, since this news doesn't apply to them. Rising juniors who are just starting summer prep should try a practice SAT and ACT to see which one they score higher on / prefer. If their only issue on the ACT is timing, we should seriously consider the ACT as the right test for them. The only concern is that we don't have any practice material and don't know what to expect yet. In the meantime, we can use the material that we have and focus more on content than timing/pacing. We can also start by prepping the SAT and switch to the ACT if necessary since there is a lot of overlap in content between the two tests.
This is a developing story and I'll have more information once I attend a question-and-answer session with ACT organization.
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