A Brief History: These have been tumultuous times in testing. During the first half of the previous decade, the Iowa-based ACT gradually rose to prominence at a time when students and educators alike were growing increasingly disenchanted with the format of –and required essay on—the SAT. As a matter of fact, there were 500,000 more ACTs taken in 2016 than SATs. At that moment, it appeared that ACT had finally succeeded in rising above its second-class status as equal, if not superior, to the aristocratic SAT. Given the trend lines, every American college and universitiy was equally happy to use SAT or ACT scores for admissions.
Unwilling to accept its dwindling market share, the College Board threw money at the problem and released a “redesigned” SAT that more closely aligned to schoolwork, the Common Core, and the ACT itself. As a matter of fact, many in testing characterized the redesigned SAT as a smarter and more nuanced version of the ACT. Others applauded it for being less biased, more transparent, and more relevant than previous incarnations of a test that historically featured analogies such as croquet: mallet and regatta: race. Because of these content changes, College Board was able to secure more in-school testing contracts; and once the test was administered more widely in high schools, market share improved, and the SAT reestablished its dominant position.
Test Optional Admissions and Covid. Then came Covid, which was an equal opportunity disruptor. With a dwindling number of test centers able and willing to administer exams in 2020-2021, colleges seized the moment to go test optional and the number of testers across the country plummeted. While SAT continued to see more of its people donning masks and wielding number 2 pencils, doing marginally better than ACT was not enough. Standardized testing faced an existential threat, prompting the most radical reimagining in a century—the College Board’s development of a digital SAT in 2024. Unsurprisingly, a shorter (2h 14m), adaptive, computerized test that was more user-friendly and easier to proctor gained steam, threatening to bury the ACT. Put it this way: as a parent, tutor or advisor, you can’t easily encourage an adolescent to take a paper ACT that is roughly 1 hour longer and exactly 117 questions denser!
As we approach 2025, the winds are shifting, and testing is regaining prominence in college admissions. While most schools will remain test optional for the foreseeable future, many others are planning to return to requiring testing in 2025, 2026, or 2027. And if you read the fine print on college websites, you'll discover that many more schools recommend the submission of an SAT or ACT, even if they don’t require it.
A New ACT? Because of SAT’s recent success and the broader renaissance in testing, ACT is acting in self-defense by scrambling to release a shorter, less threatening digital exam. While this new exam will not be adaptive like its competitor, it will allow more time per question by shedding 44 questions and 50 minutes and making the daunted Science section 100% optional. Whether deemphasizing the section that is most synonymous with the ACT brand is wise is its own conversation. More immediately, testing experts are curious about the composition of questions on the shorter, revised ACT. It stands to reason that a shorter test will have a higher percentage of challenging questions in order to maintain a normal score distribution.
So how should HS Juniors proceed? Students with an eye on testing have to decide among the digital SAT, classic ACT, and revised ACT. And while everyone’s testing strengths and propensities are different, we can comfortably generalize: The digital SAT is the most attractive option because it is a short test for which there is ample practice material and a considerable number of testing centers; the classic ACT represents the second-best option, because practice material is plentiful, but the exam is longer and testing opportunities are more limited with the (effective) retirement of the exam in September 2025; the third option is to wait out the revised ACT. While most content on the new exam should mirror that of its classic predecessor, there are no full-length practice exams available. To add insult to injury, there are issues of access. The revised exam debuts digitally in April 2025 at a limited number of pilot high schools that have approved computer equipment. For now, the ACT can only be administered on a school-issued machine. Until ACT transitions to a BYOD model, it will be difficult to roll out its digital test to a mass audience, leaving hundreds of thousands to revert to the SAT or resign themselves to paper and pencil editions of the revised ACT.
