Welcome back everyone!
Yes, I know- I’m a couple weeks late. But for my fellow underclassmen, you may not have heard this. The ACT will allow you to retake individual sections in order to increase your superscore, starting in September 2020. I believe this feature is only rolling out with the online version of the test/at test centers that do online testing, but they are also going to be expanding the amount of online test centers and allowing students to choose between online and paper.
Being able to take one of the four sections of the test individually can help a student focus all their energy on raising the score of that section. People have expressed that this update will grant an unfair advantage to middle-class/wealthier students who can afford to take the different sections as many times as necessary to get a high score.
Lastly, many believe that this change will push schools to change their policies to test-optional. If there’s some sort of advantage for supposedly “standardized” tests based on a person’s socioeconomic status, they shouldn’t hold as much weight in the college admissions process. I’m just waiting to see how the College Board/SAT counters this.
If you want to read a bit more about this, check this New York Times article out: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/act-test-superscore.html
I’m not sure if I plan on taking the ACT vs. SAT yet, but their significance is definitely about to change. Let me know your thoughts and which one you took/are planning on taking!
-Brooke
adventures of a typical high school student 