Spring Update: The ACT will be offered on April 6th, 2021 for all Juniors View the Test Taking Strategies Workshop for the ACT here ACT Non-Test Information Session Recording If you are looking to start studying for the ACT, there are some great free resources you can use!
Seniors: many colleges are waiving the requirement to have a ACT/SAT score on student applications this year due to COVID-19. Please check with your specific college's application requirements. If you are interested in taking the ACT or SAT before it is offered at school, you can find testing information and register on the ACT Website and SAT Website.
Already Took the ACT?
Sending Scores: If you have already taken the ACT Test and are need to send your scores to a college/university, please visit the ACT Score Website
Retakes: Want to retake the ACT to improve your score? Please visit the ACT Registration Website to sign up for another ACT test. Tests are offered throughout the year at off-campus locations around the Valley
| Understanding the ACT Test
One of the best ways to prepare for the ACT is to understand how the test is broken up into individual sections. You can find more about each section below: - English:
- Production of Writing (29–32%): The questions in this category require students to apply their understanding of the purpose and focus of a piece of writing.
- Knowledge of Language (13–19%): Demonstrate effective language use through ensuring precision and concision in word choice and maintaining consistency in style and tone
- Conventions of Standard English (51–56%): The questions in this category require students to apply an understanding of the conventions of standard English grammar, usage, and mechanics to revise and edit text.
- Mathematics:
- Preparing for Higher Math (57–60%): This category captures the more recent mathematics that students are learning, starting when students begin using algebra as a general way of expressing and solving equations.
- This category is divided into the following five subcategories. Algebra, Functions, Geometry, & Statistics and Probability.
- Integrating Essential Skills (40–43%): These questions address concepts typically learned before 8th grade, such as rates and percentages; proportional relationships; area, surface area, and volume; average and median; and expressing numbers in different ways.
- Modeling (>25%): This category represents all questions that involve producing, interpreting, understanding, evaluating, and improving models.
- Reading:
- Key Ideas and Details (55–60%): Read texts closely to determine central ideas and themes. Summarize information and ideas accurately. Read closely to understand relationships and draw logical inferences and conclusions including understanding sequential, comparative, and cause-effect relationships.
- Craft and Structure (25–30%): Determine word and phrase meanings, analyze an author’s word choice rhetorically, analyze text structure, understand authorial purpose and perspective, and analyze characters’ points of view. Students will interpret authorial decisions rhetorically and differentiate between various perspectives and sources of information.
- Integration of Knowledge and Ideas (13–18%): Understand authors’ claims, differentiate between facts and opinions, and use evidence to make connections between different texts that are related by topic. Some questions will require students to analyze how authors construct arguments, evaluating reasoning and evidence from various sources.
- Science:
- Interpretation of Data (45–55%): Manipulate and analyze scientific data presented in tables, graphs, and diagrams (e.g., recognize trends in data, translate tabular data into graphs, interpolate and extrapolate, and reason mathematically).
- Scientific Investigation (20–30%): Understand experimental tools, procedures, and design (e.g., identify variables and controls) and compare, extend, and modify experiments (e.g., predict the results of additional trials).
- Evaluation of Models, Inferences, and Experimental Results (25–35%): Judge the validity of scientific information and formulate conclusions and predictions based on that information (e.g., determine which explanation for a scientific phenomenon is supported by new findings).
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