The ACT is Changing

Dear Reader,

Starting in April 2025, students who choose to test online will have more flexibility and choice, experience a shorter test, and get more time to respond to each question. 

Beginning with the September 2025 test, all students testing on a Saturday, either online or on paper, will experience these benefits. Schools and districts will have these options starting in spring 2026. 

Online ACT: What’s staying the same?

• The ACT is based on your high school curriculum. 

• Scores give students the opportunity to qualify for scholarships.

• The ACT is an effective tool to help ensure students are placed in the right classes in college. 

• The Composite score scale will remain 1-36.

• Scores from tests taken prior to the rollout of the new Composite score will not change.

• The reliability and validity of the test that colleges and universities have trusted and relied on for the past 65 years. 

Online ACT: What is changing? 

• The ACT will be shortened. The test length will be reduced from 195 minutes to 125 minutes.

• The science section will become optional.

• The Composite score will now only include English, math, and reading.

• The score report will include a science score and a STEM score if students choose to take the science section.

• The number of questions will be reduced overall (44 fewer questions to be exact).

• You get more time per question.

• The number of math question answer choices has been reduced from 5 to 4.

The paper test will reflect the enhancements starting in September 2025.

Students will always have the choice to test online or on paper!

 For students who want to pursue a STEM career, the science section is still there to showcase their skills, and I highly recommend that they take the science section. It is very tempting to take a shorter test, but come application time, not taking the science section may end up doing some real damage!

 For those students who have prepared for, or are preparing for, the existing conventional ACT, I suggest that they do not switch to the online version at all. Instead, they should make sure that they make the adequate number of attempts and get their desired score by the July 2025 test date. Any time a test changes, it brings instability and unknowns with the change. If a student is not at all comfortable with the science questions (which are mainly on data interpretation and understanding experiments), then the student may want to start taking the online version of ACT from April 2025.