The ACT^® test is a standardized achievement examination for college admissions in the United States produced by ACT, Inc. (originally American College Testing Program ^[1]). It was first administered in Fall 1959 as a competitor to the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test, now the SAT Reasoning Test. Some students who perform poorly on the SAT find that they perform better on the ACT and vise versa.^[2] In February 2005, an optional writing test was added to the ACT, mirroring changes to the SAT later that year. All four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. accept ACT but the weighting that they put on it in comparison to the SAT varies by the university and generally by region.^[3] Image File history File links ACT.gif Summary ACT Licensing This is a logo of a corporation, sports team, or other organization, and is protected by copyright and/or trademark. ... Standardized testing is: in theory: a tool to ensure that student knowledge and aptitude in a given subject are examined with the same criteria across different schools. ... Look up success in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... To examine somebody or something is to inspect it closely, hence an examination is a detailed inspection or analysis of an object or person. ... College admissions is the process through which students enter undergraduate colleges. ... Autumn colours at Westonbirt Arboretum, Gloucestershire, England. ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The College Board is a non-profit examination board in the United States that was formed in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB). ... The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. ...

Function

ACT says that The ACT^® test measures high school students' general educational development and their capability to complete college-level work with the multiple-choice tests covering four skill areas: English, mathematics, reading, and science and the optional Writing Test measures skill in planning and writing a short essay.^[4]

Colleges use The ACT and the SAT Reasoning Test, because there are substantial differences in funding, curricula, grading, and difficulty among U.S. secondary schools due to American federalism. ACT/SAT scores are used to supplement the secondary school record and help admission officers put local data — such as course work, grades, and class rank — in a national perspective. Political federalism is a political philosophy in which a group of members are bound together (Latin: foedus, covenant) with a governing representative head. ...

Use

Map of states according to preferred exam of 2006 high school graduates. States in green had more students taking the ACT than the SAT.

The ACT is more widely used in the Midwestern and Southern United States, while the SAT is more popular on the east and west coasts. Use of the ACT by colleges has risen as a result of various criticisms of the effectiveness and fairness of the SAT. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The Midwest is a common name for a region of the United States of America. ... Historic Southern United States. ...

Average distribution of ACT scores

In three states, Colorado, Illinois, and Michigan, the ACT is administered to all high school juniors as a standard to measure schools and the students; in 2008, Kentucky will join the list. Image File history File linksMetadata Actgraph. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Actgraph. ... Official language(s) English Capital Denver Largest city Denver Area  Ranked 8th  - Total 104,185 sq mi (269,837 km²)  - Width 280 miles (451 km)  - Length 380 miles (612 km)  - % water 0. ... Official language(s) English[1] Capital Springfield Largest city Chicago Largest metro area Chicago Area  Ranked 25th  - Total 57,918 sq mi (149,998 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 390 miles (629 km)  - % water 4. ... Official language(s) None (English, de-facto) Capital Lansing Largest city Detroit Area  Ranked 11th  - Total 97,990 sq mi (253,793 km²)  - Width 239 miles (385 km)  - Length 491 miles (790 km)  - % water 41. ... Official language(s) English[1] Capital Frankfort Largest city Louisville Area  Ranked 37th  - Total 40,444 sq mi (104,749 km²)  - Width 140 miles (225 km)  - Length 379 miles (610 km)  - % water 1. ...

Of the graduating high school class of 2006, there were 1,206,455 students who took the ACT, this comprises 40% of the graduating class[1]. The average composite score was a 21.1. Of this class, there were 517,563 males, 646,688 females and 42,204 with an unreported gender who took the test[2]. Nationwide, 216 students who reported that they would graduate in 2006 received the highest ACT composite score of 36^[5]. This means that only one out of about every 5,500 test takers will receive a perfect score or that a 36 is the 99.9998 percentile.

Format

The required portion of the ACT is divided into four multiple choice subject tests: English, reading, mathematics, and science reasoning. Subject test scores range from 1 to 36. The English, mathematics, and reading tests also have subscores ranging from 1 to 18. The "composite score" is the average of all four tests. In addition, students taking the writing test receive a writing score ranging from 2 to 12, a "combined English/writing score" ranging from 1 to 36 (based on the writing score and English score), and one to four comments on the essay from the essay scorers. The writing score does not affect the composite score. Multiple choice (MCQ) questions or items are a form of assessment item for which respondents are asked to select one or more of the choices from a list. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A Sunday reading in the rural school. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ...

The math section covers pre-algebra, elementary algebra, intermediate algebra, coordinate geometry, geometry, and elementary trigonometry. Pre-algebra is a common name for a course in elementary mathematics. ... Algebra is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of structure, relation and quantity. ... Analytic geometry, also called coordinate geometry and earlier referred to as Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using the principles of algebra. ... Calabi-Yau manifold Geometry (Greek γεωμετρία; geo = earth, metria = measure) is a part of mathematics concerned with questions of size, shape, and relative position of figures and with properties of space. ... Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Trigonometry Trigonometry (from Greek trigōnon triangle + metron measure[1]) is a branch of mathematics that deals with triangles, particularly triangles in a plane where one angle of the triangle is 90 degrees (right angled triangles). ...

The English section covers usage/mechanics and rhetorical skills.

The reading section measures reading comprehension in four passages concerning one each prose fiction, social science, humanities and natural science. Prose is writing distinguished from poetry by its greater variety of rhythm and its closer resemblance to the patterns of everyday [[speech. ... // Fiction (from the Latin fingere, to form, create) is the genre of imaginative prose literature, including novels and short stories. ... The social sciences are groups of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. ... The humanities are those academic disciplines which study the human condition using methods that are largely analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences. ... The lunar farside as seen from Apollo 11 Natural science is the rational study of the universe via rules or laws of natural order. ...

The chart below summarizes each section and the average test score based on graduating high school seniors in 2006.

[3][4]

Score Percentiles

The percentiles that various ACT composite scores for ALL seniors (rather than college-bound) taking the ACT in 2006 correspond to are summarized in the following chart

Score comparison with SAT

Although there is no official conversion chart, the College Board, who administers the SAT, released an unofficial chart based on results from 103,525 test takers who took both tests between October 1994 and December 1996 (in earlier years, ACT scores were deleted after a certain time period at some community colleges or they were just never reported to ACT in Iowa. Therefore, these statistics are not entirely valid) here. Several colleges have also issued their own. The following is based on the University of California's conversion chart.^[6]

The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. ... The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. ...

Notes

The Princeton Review (TPR) is a for-profit American company that offers private instruction and tutoring for standardized achievement tests, in particular those offered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), such as the SAT, GRE, and GMAT. They also offer courses for the LSAT and MCAT, as well as many...

See also

• List of admissions tests

This is a list of standardized tests that students may have to take for admissions to various schools: // ISEE - Independent School Entrance Examination SSAT - Secondary School Admission Test Eleven plus - For entry to grammar schools in the UK PSLE - Entrance test into Secondary Schools for Singapore OKS - Entrance test into...

External links

• http://www.act.org/
• http://www.actstudent.org