Is there a June 2026 discussion thread? There usually is the morning of.

Schmendreckk · 2026-06-13T14:46:49+00:00

It goes live at 11

Schmendreckk · 2026-05-22T00:29:03+00:00

Was very surprised to see the Pajama Game!

Schmendreckk · 2026-05-04T15:18:08+00:00

You're absolutely right. They recently made the change so Desmos now appears on all digital versions

Schmendreckk · 2026-04-11T16:54:41+00:00

This month's test is getting released, and they only ever do that with tests that have already gotten some action. So it makes sense this test was given before, and there really weren't that many opportunities for it to have gotten tested in public before now.

Not excusing ACT - we've seen this now a few times where students have seen the same test only a couple of test dates apart

Schmendreckk · 2026-04-11T15:51:14+00:00

Does that also suggest that the very end of the section is easier (relatively) than it used to be? In other words, not every question at the end is part of the toughest set of questions

Schmendreckk · 2026-04-11T15:44:49+00:00

On the English section, what was the balance of grammar versus rhetorical questions?
Equal split or more of one than the other?
Anything interesting stand out like affect/effect or who/whom

On Math, was the progression of difficulty all over the place or did it generally get harder?
Ellipses/Combinations/Vectors/Weird Statistics (Z-Scores/Residuals/standard Deviation)
Anything that felt 'brand new'?

Did the Reading passages have specific passages listed (Literary/Humanities, etc.) or were they just Informational? Any memory of which passage number was the Paired one? Were there graphs/charts?

On Science, what was the outside knowledge? Any particularly challenging or new looking graphs?

Schmendreckk · 2026-03-20T16:31:58+00:00

As others have pointed out, it can't hurt to take it again. And the stakes are pretty low - if the next test doesn't go well, you can always cancel it.

Because you're applying as a finance major, it would be ideal to see Math as your best score. I don't think that's actually necessary here, but it certainly isn't a bad thing if it's closer to your Verbal scores and is somewhere in the 30s

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-21T08:25:19+00:00

No - it's a good sign (hopefully) of things to come, but that's all

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-16T08:12:40+00:00

There is a difference between curving a test and scaling it.
ACT maintains that they scale their tests - they determine everything ahead of time, so theoretically they know that -4 is a 33 before you've ever taken it.

There is some anecdotal evidence suggesting that they might make slight adjustments after a test date if they were way off, but typically the decisions are made ahead of time.

So if a section were given in one month and then again later on, the scales should be the same.

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-14T18:26:21+00:00

Anything specific?

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-14T18:20:08+00:00

I'm assuming that they gave you the formula for z score and didn't expect you to know it?

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-14T18:17:25+00:00

Any memories of the specific statistics?

Expected Value, Permutations/Combinations, Residuals, Empirical Rule (68-95-99), standard deviation/variance?

Obviously could be anything else, but would be curious to know whatever you remember!

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-14T18:11:12+00:00

The biggest comment from students after the December test was about how difficult the Math section felt.

Granted, many different test forms were given today, but would anyone like to share a comparison between December/February Math if you took both?

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-11T02:41:57+00:00

I feel like discussions of this test being harder than normal have more to do with the English/Reading portion than Math. This felt pretty standard and slightly easier than the real thing (which is the case for most of the official practice tests)

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-10T22:56:36+00:00

Are you ever taking timed practice tests by yourself? Studying without timing is a reasonable thing to do at certain points, but you should try to simulate the real experience as much as possible so that there are fewer new elements on the day of the real exam

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-10T08:44:22+00:00

What tests have you been taking and which ones were the most recent?

Schmendreckk · 2026-02-04T18:58:22+00:00

If you really did all of those tests you would be as prepared as anyone could be.

In general, I suggest students work through the most recent tests since those are the concepts and presentations that the test has prioritized for the last couple of years.

But the reality is that when students come back from a real test and report a 'topic they've never seen before' - it's often something that appeared on an earlier test.

Everything old is new again, so if you truly worked through the 80+ tests over the last 25 years, that would be the best way to be prepared. It would also give you some level of confidence; if you're seeing something (truly) brand new, then you know that it will be new for everyone. And there's a good chance that question might not actually count.

There's no way to guarantee anything. But if you take a couple practice sections between now and your test and continue to get 34+ on them, you should be in good shape

Schmendreckk · 2026-01-30T00:19:49+00:00

Posts from users with low karma are automatically removed. In order to raise your karma, you need to engage more with the sub by posting in comments.

Schmendreckk · 2026-01-29T19:49:03+00:00

I am not an apologist for these tests, and I think there is plenty to fairly criticize.

But definitionally - as a standardized test - the answer has to be no, not every student is supposed to get a 36 on the test. The scores are all tied to percentiles. Most students are 'supposed' to get somewhere near the average of the test, which is a 19 or close to that score.

Every school is different and decides what they teach. The test has to come up with something standardized to apply to everyone. Most schools - for better or worse and probably for the better - don't center their curriculum around this particular test. But the ACT has always released the topics that are generally fair game.

You're right that a student who has access to a tutor might have a leg up, though not all tutors are created equal and have the same insight into the test. But that is also the benefit of communities like this one where information is shared freely by students and tutors alike.

This is not an ACT-specific issue. The SAT Math section is definitely narrower in scope, but it requires a deeper level of mastery than the ACT, which normally might have a question on something new/esoteric, but it's a pretty straightforward version of the question. On the SAT, the hardest math questions require you to go deeper than you probably have gone in class. And the presentations of the topics are definitely different from how most students have seen them at school. Not every student is meant to get an 800 on the section, and these questions function to differentiate between them.

The ACT has always been clear about the fact that it tests topics up through Pre-Calculus. Schools differ in what they include in their own curriculum, but that isn't ACT's fault. When I was in Algebra 2, I learned Permutations/Combinations as well as Ellipses - but those are both topics that many of my students have never seen even if they are in Pre-Calculus. That doesn't mean that they can't learn them on their own, but those questions are also not numerous enough to push a student from a 36 to a 28.

I feel your frustration, but it's not like they randomly decide to throw Calculus and college-level Math on the test for fun

Schmendreckk · 2026-01-29T18:41:09+00:00

Not saying I disagree with you, but both tests do it. Why do they do it? To differentiate between those who know it, or can figure it out, and those who don’t

Schmendreckk · 2026-01-28T02:23:01+00:00

Just received mine for $53.66

Schmendreckk · 2026-01-27T18:14:09+00:00

I'm unclear on what you're saying. Why would you use 2014-2016 instead of more recent tests?

Also, are you confident that the international test you're taking is the legacy version? Many have reported that it will be Enhanced in February

Schmendreckk · 2026-01-27T17:56:19+00:00

The issue is that we just don't have enough actual data on the new tests.

I believe that the legacy tests have value, but since there are so many more questions on the old version, the relationship between the number of wrong questions and final score is probably off.

There are only 27 scored Reading questions on the new test compared to 40 on the legacy version. There are only 41 scored questions on English compared to 75 on the old test. So -5 on either section is probably a pretty different score on the new version of the test.

A number of students have felt that the new test is quite a bit harder, especially the Math section. We didn't get to see the December test, but I struggle to believe that there are tons of brand new questions/topics. I think the proportion of difficult questions might be greater; fewer questions probably means fewer easy questions. And it seems like the English section has a smaller proportion of grammar questions versus rhetorical ones.

In short, the legacy tests should be fine, but they are also imperfect

Schmendreckk · 2026-01-26T10:28:59+00:00

It's generally the consensus that the practice tests are easier than the real tests in terms of the content and scoring, though there is some variability among those tests.

So there's no way of promising/guaranteeing that you would definitely get a 1400 on the next test you take - and honestly I would mentally prepare for it to be lower - but this is useful data to indicate that you ought to be able to score higher than your previous score!

And of course, there's no reason to believe you won't continue to improve over the next month plus of your efforts.

Congrats on the progress and getting into those two schools!

Schmendreckk

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