The authors of the ACT insist that the ACT is an achievement test, meaning that it is designed to measure your readiness for college instruction. There is ongoing debate about how well the ACT accomplishes that mission. What is not debated is that the ACT is not a direct measure of intelligence. It is not an IQ test. The ACT is certainly not a measure of your worth as a human being. It is not even a perfect measure of how well you will do in college. Theoretically, each of us has a specific potential to learn and acquire skills. The ACT doesn’t measure your natural, inborn ability. If it did, we wouldn’t be as successful as we are at raising students’ scores on ACT exams.
The ACT actually measures a certain knowledge base and skill set. It is “trainable,” meaning that you can do better on your ACT if you work on gaining the knowledge and acquiring the skills that are tested. The ACT is broken up into four multiple-choice tests and one optional essay. The multiple-choice tests are called English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science Reasoning, respectively. They are always given in the same order. In fact, there is a lot of predictability when it comes to the ACT. The current exam still has very much in common with ACT exams from past years. This means that we basically know what is going to be on your ACT in terms of question types and content. The ACT Structure chart on the next page provides more information on the format of the ACT.
ACT offers a thirty-minute Writing Test as an optional component to the ACT. Many colleges and universities require applicants to take the Writing Test. Be sure to check with your schools of choice prior to registering for the test.
WHO WRITES THE ACT?
There is a company called ACT, Inc. that decides exactly what is going to be on your ACT exam. This group of experts consults with classroom teachers at the high school and college level. They look at high school and college curricula and they employ educators and specialized psychologists called “psychometricians” (measurers of the mind), who know a lot about the human brain and how it operates under various conditions. We picture them as “evil genius” researchers gleefully rubbing their hands together and trying to think up ways to keep you out of college. Don’t fear, however; we are the “good geniuses” trying to get you into the college of your choice. We’ll lay out the details of how you will be tested so that you can get yourself ready for the “contest” on test day.
REGISTERING FOR THE ACT
You must register for the ACT in advance. You can’t just show up on test day with a number 2 pencil and dive right in. The best source of information for all things ACT is, not surprisingly, the ACT Web site: www.act.org. There is also a very good chance that a guidance counselor and/or pre-college counselor at
your school has an ACT Registration Book, which includes all of the information that you need for your test registration.
WHY DO ACT EXAMS EXIST?
Back in the mid-twentieth century, some people noticed that there was a disturbing trend in college admissions. Most of the people who were entering college came from a fairly small group of people who went to a limited number of high schools. Many had parents who had attended the same colleges. There wasn’t
much opportunity for students from new families to “break into” the higher education system. Standardized entrance exams were an attempt to democratize the situation and create a meritocracy where admissions decisions were based on achievement and not just social status. The ACT was not the first standardized
college entrance exam. It came a little later as an attempt at improving on the older SAT.
Colleges use the ACT for admissions decisions and, sometimes, for advanced placement. It is also used to make scholarship decisions. Since there are variations among high schools around the country, the admissions departments at colleges use the ACT, in part, to help provide a standard for comparison. There are studies that reveal a fair amount of “grade inflation” at some schools. So, colleges cannot simply rely upon grade point averages when evaluating academic performance.
ACT SCORES
Each of the multiple-choice sections of the ACT is called a Test. Each test is given a score on a scale of 1 to 36. These four “scaled scores” are then averaged and rounded according to normal rounding rules to yield a Composite Score. It is this Composite Score that is most often meant when someone refers to your ACT score.
Your actual score report will also refer to “subscores,” which are reported for your English, Mathematics, and Reading tests. These are based on your performance on a subset of the questions on each of these tests. Our experience has been that there is nothing to be gained from discussing them in detail with students. Reports indicate that many college admissions professionals don’t have the faintest idea how to utilize them when making admissions decisions.
One important thing that can be said about scores is that you don’t have to be perfect to get a good score on the ACT. The truth is that you can miss a fair number of questions and still get a score that places you in the top 1% of all test takers. In fact, this test is so hard and the time limit is so unrealistic for most test takers that you can get a score that is at the national average (about a 21) even if you get almost half of the questions wrong. Use the scoring guidelines provided in this book to estimate your ACT score at each stage of your preparation.
WRITING TEST SCORING GUIDELINES
The ACT Writing Test is scored on a 2-point through 12-point scale. Two professional, trained readers will evaluate your answer, and each of them will assign a point value of 1 (worst) through 6 (best); the two scores are then totaled. If the two readers assign scores that differ by more than 1 point, then a 3rd reader will be called in to read your essay and make the final decision regarding your score. The scores are holistic scores, which means that your essay is judged as a whole without assigning point values to the specific characteristics that the graders are looking for.
Read More : Understanding The ACT
