Not only are today’s high school students being affected by frequent changes in colleges’ testing policies (as described in a recent blog post), they also have another upcoming change to contend with: next year, the ACT will switch to a digital format, in addition to undergoing other alterations. However, in comparison to the calculated, years-long transition of the SAT from a paper to a computer-based test, the ACT’s digital rollout seems far more rushed and haphazard. As one test prep professional recently put it, “they’re building the plane as they fly it.”
And if you think ACT is doing all of this in the interest of students, think again: with more students now taking the SAT, ACT is simply trying to regain its market share.
So, what are the upcoming changes and how will they impact students? First, it’s important to note that ACT has offered a digital version of its test since 2015. However, it is exactly the same as the paper version, and it has mainly been used for school-day testing rather than on national test dates.
The new digital ACT will be different from the paper version in two key ways:
- It will be a shorter test, with fewer questions in each section.
- The science section will be optional, and a student’s score on this section will not be factored into their composite score. Starting next fall, the composite score will be the average of a student’s scores on the English, Math, and Reading sections.
In addition, the passages on the English and Reading sections are going to be shorter, the answer choices on the Math section will be reduced from five to four choices, and more questions on the optional Science section will require prior scientific knowledge.
Unlike the digital SAT, the digital ACT will not be an adaptive test, meaning that regardless of how students answer questions at the beginning of the test, they will all see the same questions later in the test. (On the digital SAT, each section is divided into two modules, and the number of questions a student answers correctly in the first module determines the difficulty of the questions they see in the second module.)
The digital ACT will be available starting in April 2025, but the paper test will also be available for the April, June, and July test dates. Beginning with the September 2025 ACT, only the digital version will be offered. With the science section becoming optional and the writing section continuing to be optional, there will be 12 different variations of the ACT offered over the course of nine months!
ACT is making the transition even more complicated by requiring test centers to provide devices for students. (In contrast, the SAT allows students to test on their own devices.) This means that test centers will get to decide if they’re going to offer the digital ACT, and test prep professionals are skeptical that many centers will be prepared to do that next spring or even next fall.
Additionally, even though ACT is making the science section optional, some colleges may still require it. Yet, if the changes in colleges’ testing policies over the last several months are any indication, students may not know by next spring if the schools they’re planning to apply to will require the science test, and therefore won’t know if they should take it or not.
Not only may access to the digital ACT be limited, but ACT has not announced when practice versions of the digital test are going to be available, meaning it will be difficult for students to prepare for the computer-based test. Therefore, test prep professionals are advising students in the Class of 2026 to either take the SAT or to take the paper ACT with the science section and finish testing by next July.
As for how colleges will respond to the ACT’s changes, that remains to be seen.