ACT

The ACT, formerly the American College Testing Program or American College Test, is a college-entrance achievement test that emerged in 1959 as a competitor to the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test, now the SAT. Mirroring the changes undergone by the SAT in 2005, the ACT started offering a writing test in February, 2005. Almost every college accepts and treats the ACT and SAT equally. Several students have found the answers to upcoming ACT tests on p2p networks.

Acceptance

The ACT is typically used for college admissions, but it is also sometimes used for class placement. The vast majority of colleges treat the SAT and ACT the same. In the past, coastal universities tended to prefer SAT scores over ACT, but that has changed during the past couple of decades. Now, even Harvard admissions officers, as reported in a New York Times story, admit that they don't prefer one test over the other, and more students on the East and West Coasts are discovering the ACT.

Differences between SAT and ACT

The Princeton Review, a test-preparation company, believes that the ACT is a fundamentally better test than the SAT. The Princeton Review, indicates in its book, Cracking the ACT, that it favors the ACT because it finds the ACT exam questions less ambiguous and more knowledge-based.

The ACT (unlike the SAT) does not take points off for wrong answers, making it to the advantage of the test taker to answer or guess at every single question. Instead of having the writing test first like in the SAT, the ACT offers the optional writing test after all parts of the basic test have been completed. With few exceptions, the ACT does not test for vocabulary.

The math component of the ACT includes trigonometry, a topic that is not included in the SAT Reasoning Test (although it is present in the SAT Subject Test covering math). One important policy difference is that the ACT does not allow any calculators with algebra systems, including the popular TI-89.

An important difference is how the scores are sent. When sending SAT scores, every score received is sent. The ACT allows the person to pick which scores from a certain sitting to send. This is referred to as "score choice", which had previously been offered by the SAT.

ACT Organization

The ACT is administered by a private not-for-profit organization under the same name. The national headquarters is located in Iowa City, Iowa. E.F. Lindquist and Ted McCarrel, faculty members of the University of Iowa, founded the organization in 1959 (ACT does not have any official affiliation with the university). ACT received its current name following a name change in 1997. Besides the ACT, it also administers several assessment tests in other fields.

Usage

The ACT is more widely used in the midwest and southeast United States, while the SAT is more popular in the northeast and the west coast. Usage of the ACT by colleges has risen as a result of various criticisms of the effectiveness and fairness of the SAT.

In two states, Colorado and Illinois, the ACT is taken by all high school juniors as a standard to measure schools and the students, and Michigan is in the process of doing the same. This exam is like the regular test except that the NCAA will not accept it; ironically the ACT administers the NCAA athlete eligibility system. In most states however, the ACT is an optional test for college acceptance.

Format

The ACT is divided into four sections: English, Reading, Mathematics, and Science Reasoning. The maximum sub-section score is 36, while subscores, which are only given in English, Mathematics, and Reading, range from 1-18. The composite score is the average of all four sections. In addition, the person taking the test may receive a writing score ranging from 1 to 12. The writing score does not affect the composite score directly, but is averaged with the English score for an English/writing score.

The average score is around 20 to 21. Any composite score over 30 is considered to be in the 99th percentile. In the 2004-2005 testing cycle, 251 students nationwide received a perfect ACT composite score of 36, a lower number than perfect scores on the SAT, mostly because of the lesser number of ACT test takers.

ACT Math Section

There are 60 questions on the ACT math section, which must be completed in 60 minutes. The math section covers pre-algebra, elementary algebra, intermediate algebra, coordinate geometry, geometry, and trigonometry.