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The Digital ACT is here! Read a breakdown of the new Enhanced ACT's shorter format, optional Science section, and how the first group of students performed on the redesigned test.
The Enhanced ACT has officially arrived in digital and paper format. In April, the new Digital ACT debuted, and September 6 marked the national launch of the redesigned Enhanced ACT test in both paper and digital formats.
Based on results from more than 100 students, the first group to take the new Digital ACT reported that the updated format felt familiar, smoother, and shorter — but not necessarily easier. Scores largely matched legacy ACT results, with minor shifts in Math and Science and no major surprises overall.
Questions remain regarding Superscoring across testing formats, the relative value of the Science section, and the new scoring scales, but the launch of the redesigned test was largely a success.
While the SAT is typically overhauled every decade or so (1995, 2005, 2016, 2024), the ACT has, for the most part, remained intact since its debut in 1959. Social Studies shifted to Reading and Natural Science morphed into Science, but apart from these modifications, the ACT of 2024 looked very similar to that of 1959: four discrete sections, focused on academic achievement and the core high school curriculum, yielding a test time of three hours, give or take 5 minutes.
During my 25 years in the testing space, I’ve witnessed ever-so subtle changes to the ACT, such as the addition of comparison passages in Reading, the integration of new math concepts, and some shifting question types in the Science section. The only significant structural change took place in 2015 with the addition of an optional essay, which served to keep pace with the SAT, and the introduction of the ACT in a digital format in 2015. Otherwise, the ACT has chugged along without fanfare or changes warranting external attention.
The migration of the ACT from its “Legacy” format to its new “Enhanced ACT” format follows the historical pattern of the ACT making relatively modest changes. The question types are largely unchanged: ACT content remains ACT content. The questions in the first Digital ACT practice tests offered by the ACT were pulled directly from previously administered tests: Nothing new under the sun. The only “enhancements” involved reducing the number of items, allotting students more time per question, making Science optional, and reducing the overall testing time. This is to say, the Enhanced ACT is a very familiar test.
The ACT has been losing market share and observing the growing popularity of other shorter assessments. In 2023 the TOEFL and the GRE dramatically reduced their respective testing times to under two hours. The SAT dropped almost an hour of testing time and released a digital test in 2024 that was a mere 2 hours and 14 minutes long, perfectly positioned to be administered during the school day. The ACT decided to one-up the SAT and came up with a test that was 2 hours and 5 minutes long, without the optional Science section.
The new ACT test runs 2 hours and 5 minutes long, which is 75 minutes shorter than the legacy ACT test and even shorter than the Digital SAT.
Students continue to prefer the paper version of the ACT, and this is the format we recommend. Pearson’s TestNav, the delivery engine for the Digital ACT, lags behind the College Board’s Blue Book application in several ways. As we reported earlier, there are issues with annotations and highlights that disappear when you advance to the next question. Working through Science graphs and charts is easier in a paper format, and the testing software doesn’t always guide you smoothly through the Reading passages or immediately direct you to the relevant content being tested.
Additionally, the “Bring Your Own Device” policy has not yet been implemented across all testing centers nationally and has been delayed until the spring for international students. Relying upon school-provided devices has been problematic for some of our test-takers.
Anecdotally, and analyzing all available data, the September testers performed as expected. No alarms went off after the testing administration or following the return of scores. The majority of students felt largely prepared for the tests, and their results on the official test aligned with those on their practice tests and Legacy ACTs.
Analyzing the results from 122 students who took the new ACT test in September reveals a great degree of consistency with prior tests and assessment reliability. Most composite scores clustered around increases of 1 and 2 points from previous tests, consistent with other ACTs. 100 of the 122 students opted to take the Science section. The Science section showed the most consistent score gains from prior testing (1.9 point increases), followed by Math (1.1 point gains) and English (1.0 point gains), and Reading showed only a modest increase. Sixty-one percent of students achieved score increases in Science, 55% saw gains in Math, 50% saw gains in English, and 42% in Reading. For many students, this was their first official test, and future gains are expected on the October and December ACTs.
After receiving their official results, some of our students were delighted, while others were disappointed, and others were already preparing for the next official test. This is typical for any single ACT administration. Broadly speaking, the Digital ACT looks and feels a lot like the Legacy tests it is replacing. While we don’t have adequate data to populate a complete scoring curve of the Enhanced ACT, our initial sample indicates there should be few big surprises when this becomes available.
Many students found September’s Math section to be particularly challenging. Compared to the 60 items on the Legacy ACT Math section, the 45 math items on the Enhanced ACT begin at a higher level of difficulty. To migrate from Legacy to Enhanced, the ACT effectively lopped off items 1-15 and “shortened the on-ramp” to more advanced material. Raising the average level of difficulty of the items is a way to maintain the stability of the scoring curve. Several students noted a greater emphasis on pre-Calculus content on the September ACT and noticed a greater focus on higher-level concepts.
No — the Digital ACT does not include the Desmos calculator. Students must bring an approved calculator for the Math section. The ACT’s TestNav platform focuses on navigation and annotation, not built-in computation tools.
As expected, the Science section increased the number of questions that required outside knowledge. Students noted that some of the tested content was highly specific and challenging. However, having an additional 5 minutes helped many more students complete the Science section in time.
Many students opted out of taking the Science section, given that so few colleges currently require or recommend it. We continue to advise that every student take the Science section at least once in the event that any colleges on their list subsequently recommend or require it for admission.
The jury is out, and students universally prefer a shorter test format. That’s a win.
But shorter formats increase the Standard Error of Measurement, so a careless error or two can be more costly. This is one of the tradeoffs of reducing the number of items on a standardized test. There’s less pressure on mental endurance as testing time decreases, but there’s also a higher price for a missed question, especially at the top of the scoring curve. This is exacerbated by the fact that 17% of the items (29/171) on the Enhanced ACT are experimental “field test” items, thereby further reducing the number of operational items that count towards a score.
The scoring curves on the practice tests in the ACT Red Book reflect this steeper curve, especially for the English and Reading sections. On a standard Legacy Reading section, missing 5 of the 40 test items brings a student’s score to 32. The new official Digital ACT practice tests reveal that missing 5 of the 27 operational items (9 are experimental) reduces a student’s score to 28, markedly lower than the 32. There is noticeably less room for error at the top of the curve in this new, shorter format.
Some students complained that the content on the September test was not fully captured in the ACT’s 4 official practice tests. That is a fact, particularly in the domain of math. The ACT assesses a broad range of math concepts, and many appear at relatively infrequent intervals. In addition, the four official Digital ACT practice tests are derived from previously released Legacy ACTs that were “frankensteined” into an Enhanced format. New and better official practice will be forthcoming, and eventually, these 4 official practice tests will be updated and replaced.
Legacy ACTs will continue to be administered during the school day and internationally until spring, at which point every test administered will be in the Enhanced format. Some students will go back and forth between the Enhanced ACT on national testing administration dates and the Legacy ACT during school-day administrations.
The ACT is making progress. The move to a shorter testing format was a move in the right direction. Giving students more time per question has decreased the speediness of the test, though the SAT remains more generous with its timing. The ACT needs to improve its practice material and make Bring Your Own Device universally accessible where digital ACTs are administered. We will soon know more about the scoring curves, particularly with the “My Answer Key” service coming in October, April, and June. We will learn over the next year or so how colleges will treat the Science section and whether it will have a meaningful impact on admissions or begin to fade from relevance.
The momentary confusion over Legacy and Enhanced tests will be gone within a year, and then we will simply be back to the SAT and the ACT as the two assessments in the college admissions testing duopoly. Some students will prefer the SAT, while others will gravitate towards the Digital ACT, and it’s a net positive that students continue to have choices when it comes to testing.
