First Online ACT Practice Test Released, But Questions Remain

Jan 14, 2025

The ACT is changing – and there have only been so many details released so far. After an initial spate of new information this summer, ACT Inc. has not provided much in terms of substantive updates about its flagship test. Recently, however, the ACT website was quietly modified to include a full-length practice version of the online test. It is worth noting that there was no ACT Newsroom post heralding these changes. Furthermore, most preparation materials on the ACT website – including full-length practice tests, practice quizzes, and third party questions – still cover only the current iteration of the test and make little or no mention of the upcoming revisions. In fact, the new online practice test is only accessible if one follows a multi-click path to the correct corner of the ACT website. With all this in mind, the Online ACT may end up looking very different when it is soft-launched in April 2025 than it does with this current practice test.

Initial Observations

With the first administration of the Online ACT less than four months away, it is exciting to finally have a glimpse of the much-anticipated changes. Such excitement is tempered by a platform that feels unfinished. Many of the revisions promised in original communications have yet to be implemented – unless they have been abandoned entirely. Moreover, a good portion of the content released in this practice version has been recycled from previous official tests, including the entirety of the Reading section.

Hopes of a clean interface have also been dashed, at least for the time being. The Online ACT platform is, at best, a lateral move from the platform currently used with the Computer-Based ACT taken by international (and select few U.S.-based) students.

The new Online ACT platform:

The current Computer-Based ACT platform:

The CollegeBoard’s SAT Bluebook App, by comparison, looks and feels markedly more sophisticated.

The Bluebook platform also boasts superior tools: a smooth annotation function for Reading and Writing sections, a formula sheet for key geometry concepts, and a DESMOS calculator.

Beyond the interface, the adjustments (or, in some cases, lack thereof) that have been made to each section give us a deeper view of the scope of these changes.

English

With a handful of new question types, the English section has gotten the largest update compared to the current iteration of the ACT. That being said, the most significant previously announced adjustment – that grammar questions would no longer include a “NO CHANGE” option – has been scrapped, at least for the time being.

40 percent of items (20 of 50) focus on basic grammar rules and include the following question:

This phrasing is similar to, albeit less specific than, that used on the SAT: “Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to conventions of Standard English?”

In terms of content, these grammar questions test much of what the SAT covers – including Subject-Verb Agreement, Pronoun Ambiguity and Case, and Separating Non-Essential Information. Additionally, the Online ACT has retained certain grammar that the Digital SAT phased out, specifically, Pronoun Ambiguity, Word Choice, and Syntax. Some critics of the ACT have raised concerns that certain Word Choice and Syntax questions are too idiomatic and, thus, disadvantageous to non-native English Speakers. There are a few of these potentially problematic questions represented on the practice test.

Surprisingly, the Online ACT practice test contains no questions that measure knowledge of periods, semicolons, and colons. In contrast, on the SAT, the ability to correctly connect independent clauses is an indispensable skill. Here, all punctuation questions focus on commas, dashes, and apostrophes.

Redundancy questions, which have not yet appeared on any Digital SAT practice test, continue to be part of the ACT; however, these items appear as a separate question type (of which there are 4 instances on this test):

This is a surprising change, as one of the key challenges provided by Redundancy questions on the current ACT is identifying that they are, indeed, testing Redundancy.

Transitional Term and Word Choice questions (of which there are 6 and 2, respectively) do not contain consistent verbiage. These questions ask which word or phrase is “most grammatically acceptable,” “most precise,” or “most logical in context.”

Roughly 40 percent of the questions in this practice test invite students to engage with the text beyond grammar rules, and are nearly identical to similar questions on the current version of the ACT. Familiar tasks remain, such as determining whether to add or delete a phrase or to place a word or phrase in a larger context.

All the changes listed above notwithstanding, the final passage of the English section (“The Artful Stitch of Paj Ntaub”) is recycled directly from ACT Test A10, originally administered in December 2017. All of the associated questions previously appeared in Test A10, but four of those original questions are omitted.

Math

The most glaring change on the Math section of the Online ACT is structural. As initially announced, the number of answer choices for each item has been reduced from five to four. This adjustment more closely aligns ACT math questions with their SAT counterparts. However, SAT math students are provided with two distinct advantages that are absent here: a reference sheet with key geometry formulas and an embedded DESMOS graphing calculator. While it was initially reported that the Online ACT would include DESMOS functionality, this practice test has instead provided a basic (and somewhat clunky) scientific calculator. It is unclear if the official Online ACT will upgrade to a more advanced tool. As DESMOS is currently available for students who take the State & District Online pre-ACT, one hopes that it will be included in the April soft-launch.

Shortening the math section from 60 to 45 questions has given students a minor boost to the average time they have available to complete each item (from 60 seconds to 67 seconds), but doing so has also removed some predictability from the testing experience. The current iteration of the ACT has a clear order of difficulty, with the first 20 questions generally being easiest and the last 10 generally being the most difficult. Knowing where to expect challenging and/or time-consuming questions has been a powerful asset for ACT testers, allowing them to refine pacing strategies to maximize their accuracy. The sample Online ACT does not have as organized an order of difficulty. For instance, Math Item 3 on this practice test asks students to both interpret probability from a chart and visualize it as a geometric figure.

Meanwhile, Item 43 requires a relatively straightforward calculation for a cylinder. 

Moving away from a clear order of difficulty thus removes one of the key strategic upsides that the ACT Math section has over the SAT.

Content-wise, there are no surprises here; the online version of the test is much the same as its paper-and-pencil counterpart. When compared to the SAT, the Online ACT covers a wider breadth of content (including Venn Diagrams, Natural Logs, Imaginary Numbers) but with generally more straightforward questions. In line with earlier communications surrounding the Online ACT, longer math word problems have been de-emphasized: 30 of the 45 questions in the practice test contain a single line of text, and only one question contains more than two lines of text.

Reading

This section is completely recycled from a previous official ACT test. All four passages and all associated questions originally appeared in the June 2023 administration (Test F12). One question has been omitted from each passage. Initial reports by ACT Inc. promised that students would need to better “understand authors’ claims, differentiate between facts and opinions, and use evidence to make connections between different texts that are related by topic.” Such updates have yet to be made.

Unfortunately, the highlighter tool included with this test is nearly unusable in its current form. As annotation is such a core strategy on the reading section, similar functionality at launch would put online testers at a severe disadvantage compared to those who would take the paper-and-pencil test. This could be a difference-maker for students considering the online option for the April ACT. 

Science

One of the major changes with the new Online ACT is that the Science section will become optional for test takers. It is, perhaps, somewhat unsurprising then that this section does not feel at all dissimilar from the current incarnation of the test. None of the questions here break any new ground. Most ask students to interpret data from one chart, figure, or viewpoint; some require a more in-depth understanding of the full passage; and a few that necessitate basic science knowledge (4 in this case). Additionally, the passage types (Research Summary, Data Representation, and Conflicting Viewpoints) remain the same for this test. In fact, passage 4 – the one concerning Dissolved Organic Carbon and Leachates – first appeared in an official ACT administered in December of 2017 (Test A10). All of the questions from this passage are the same, but two have been omitted for the online version. 

Where this Science section does make improvements over the paper-and-pencil test is that students will no longer need to flip pages to move between questions and pertinent graphs. With the online platform, each question will appear alongside information from the passage, with important information already highlighted in some cases.

Takeaways and Recommendations

For any students considering participating in the soft-launch, we advise caution. Firstly, the technology remains untested. While the recent switch to digital SAT testing was relatively smooth, the same can’t be said for certain computer-based PSAT and AP administrations. Especially considering the less-than-optimal communication and planning from the ACT thus far in the process, platform stability is a significant concern.

Secondly, too many questions remain about the test content. While it is helpful to see some initial changes implemented in the newly-released Online ACT practice test, such as the reduction of math answer choices down to four, it remains unclear how reflective this particular practice test will be of the April 2025 soft-launch.

Finally, while there are already some discrepancies over the current SAT and ACT concordance tables, there is greater uncertainty over how Online ACT scores will align with SAT scores, let alone with paper-based ACT scores. Specifically, with the Science section becoming optional for the Online ACT but staying mandatory for the paper-based ACT, there may very well be some scoring scale adjustments during the soft-launch period.

It is, therefore, our recommendation that U.S. students wait to try the computer-based version of the test until at least September 2025 when the Online ACT is officially launched for national testing. With hope, additional clarifying information will be released as soon as possible. We will continue to provide updates as they are available and adjust our recommendations accordingly.

Written by

Zachary Adler
Author Image Since 2010, Zach has been helping students achieve their college readiness goals, specializing in all sections of the SAT, ACT, PSAT, and SHSAT. Prior to joining Onsen, Zach worked for a global investment firm, as well as in various roles in the education space. He has served as a youth mentor and has run college readiness information sessions for students in under-resourced communities. Additionally, Zach is a writer and filmmaker. He is an International Baccalaureate scholar and a graduate of Boston University.

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