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What is ACT?

What is ACT?

ACT is a standardized test that is considered for college admission in US for undergraduation.

It stands for American College Testing. Administered by ACT Inc, the ACT is a multiple-choice, and pencil-and-paper test. The importance of ACT scores in the college application process depends on the admission criteria and selection procedures of each of the schools applied to. There is no fixed cut-off across all schools in the USA. However, in general, the higher the ACT score, the better the choices are for admissions or scholarships in various colleges.

The ACT exam is offered nationally in the US every year about 7 times – specifically in September, October, December, February, April, June, and July.

Usually, as a high school student you will choose to take the ACT, SAT, or both during the spring of your junior year or fall of your senior year. While you can retake the test in case you want to improve your score, it is important to give yourself sometime between the ACT attempts.

Let’s get to more details about the ACT:

The ACT has the following four mandatory sections:

English

Reading

Math

Science

The ACT also includes an optional 40-minute Essay type Writing Test.

The ACT is 2 hours and 55 minutes long. If Writing test is also taken then the test will be 3 hours and 35 minutes long.

Scoring Details of ACT:

Each section of the ACT is scored on a 1 to 36 point scale. The composite ACT score is the average of all the four section scores, also on a scale from 1 to 36.

If Writing Test is also taken with ACT, a separate score on the Writing Test is given.

Format of ACT:

English

The first section is a 45minutes English test with 75 questions. The English test has five passages with various sections underlined on one side of the page and options to correct the underlined portions on the other side of the page.

Math

The second section is a 60minutes Math test, with 60questions. Topics covered are- pre-algebra,elementary algebra, intermediate algebra, plane geometry, coordinate geometry, and elementary trigonometry.

Reading

The third section is the Reading sectionof 35minutes duration, and total 40questions. It consists of 4 sections. 3 sections are one long prose passage each and 1 sectionhas two shorter prose passages.

Science

The fourth section is the Science test is of 35minutes duration, and total 40questions. There are seven passages each followed by five to seven questions.

Writing

The Writing section, administered at the end of the test, is of 40 minutes duration. This section is optional as already mentioned above. It is important to note that the score in the Writing/Essay section is not used to calculate the composite score nor does it impact the English section score; it is given separately.

These are the basic information about ACT covered in this blog. Look out for the next blog where we go into more details about how ACT differs from SAT.

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