The ACT is Changing: Be Prepared!

Now when I say evolving I don’t mean anything in the way of what the SAT is doing with their completely new digital format. Relatively speaking, the ACT has been a monolith of an exam since its update in the late 1980’s, and this newest test is no different. The format is identical, but with time comes change, and there have been changes.

Here are my biggest takeaways from my official test taking experience:

English:

The most apparent change in the English section has to be the increased presence of vocabulary questions. The ACT has always had vocabulary type questions, but rarely more than 2 or 3 per test. I counted 6 total pure vocabulary questions on this exam, which may not sound like much, but is a 200-300% increase, and could easily mean the difference between a student scoring a 30 or a 28. 

Vocabulary has historically been a massive component of the SAT, and its increased presence on the ACT hints at a greater overlapping between the two tests, something which is further supported by another thing I noticed on the english section: Bad Faith questions.

Bad faith questions are my way of describing a question whose answer is that the question itself doesn’t make sense: like asking what the proper amount of money is to rob from a bank (hint, it’s less than you’d think).

Bad faith type questions aren’t inherently wrong or evil, and they do serve an important test taking function, forcing students to have a full grasp of the concepts they’re being asked about. The SAT is famous for its tricky non-answer questions (ask any student about the paranoia inducing “No Solution” answer choices on the math section), which were one of the biggest distinguishing features between the ACT and SAT. The SAT throws curveballs, while the ACT plays it straight-up.

Now I’ve only seen exactly one bad faith type question on the most recent ACT, but this is still extremely alarming, as I have never seen anything of the sort from ACT before. Thankfully, knowing is half the battle, so if you see a question on the ACT tempting you to accuse it of nonsense, give it some thought.

Math:

Students have recently been reporting the math section is significantly increasing in difficulty, and this seems to be marginally holding true in my experience. 

Whereas before the ACT focused mainly on a vast breadth of isolated math concepts, the test now seems to be once again treading in the footsteps of its SAT counterpart with an increased emphasis on conceptual synthesis type questions.

These types of questions ask students to utilize multiple mathematical concepts to solve a question, such as identifying an algebraic expression that produces rational numbers (as opposed to an algebra question, or a question involving identifying rational numbers). Along with this also comes an increase in conceptual questions, that test less about solving math problems, and more about math itself.

Another significant change I noticed on the math section involved Statistics questions. The ACT has long had questions on statistics, but these ones went far past the typical mean, median, and mode, asking instead for knowledge on standard deviation, normal distribution percentages, and interquartile ranges. Brush up on that stats knowledge!

Reading and Science:

The Reading and Science sections both had fairly small tweaks, with the bulk of the tests remaining largely unchanged. 

Reading is nearly identical in both format and question type, with the only significant change I noted being that the comparison passage questions were no longer labeled as belonging to either Passage A or Passage B (“Questions 8-10 ask about Passage A”). Instead, all of the questions were lumped together and unlabeled in the question list.

The science section was again fairly similar to previous tests. That said, I did notice an anecdotal increase in Outside Knowledge type questions, which test arbitrary scientific knowledge gained in high school classes (and even some gained in middle school: pop quiz! Who remembers where igneous rocks come from?). 

Thankfully, all of these changes only add up to a marginal shift in direction and overall I’m happy to report that my curriculum is still highly effective, as my students and I still performed exceptionally.

If you or your student would like help navigating the ACT or SAT, please give us a call or text anytime 858-735-6996 to get started today!