The ACT recently made changes to their test making it “the most streamlined and flexible test ever!” per the ACT website. Not only has the science section become optional, but the reading passages are shorter and aimed to reduce fatigue. The math section now has four answer choices instead of five to match the other sections. Overall, the changes have shortened the test by 75 minutes while still allowing more time per question. These changes first went into effect during the September ACT and will be the ACT standard for the foreseeable future.
“Overall I think it was actually easier,” said senior Adalyn Jensen. She took the most recent September exam. It was her second time taking the ACT. “I wasn’t as fatigued after the exam, and really noticed how short the English section was.”
Typically a student will take the exam two to three times before calling it done. For the class of 2026 who have taken exams in the spring or prior, they are returning to an unfamiliar exam.
Senior Oscar Edwards took the exam despite being tired and sore from running in a cross country meet the night before.
“Overall the new format is much easier,” Edwards said.
“I would say that English is easier now than it was,”he said. “The reading is easier, and I’m glad there is no dual passage anymore.”
Other students noticed that while timing and passages were easier, the math section added some challenges.
“There were higher-level questions in the math,” senior Aly Lee from Elkhorn South said. “I had just learned them in AP Calculus AB, and there was a lot more standard deviation than I’d expected,” she said.
An Omaha ACT Test prep company, Three Moms and a Test (3MT), has been preparing students for the exam since 2005. Mary Kay Leatherman, the general strategies instructor, develops the program 3MT uses, and she stressed how “the content is the same, however it feels different.”
“The students I worry about are the students who took it as juniors and now they’re coming back,” she said. “Old scores will become incomparable to new scores.”
Leatherman said she wants students to understand that “the clock is not as heavy” however, there are a lot of things test prep companies across the country are just waiting to hear back on before they can begin adjusting alongside students.
“The whole world here has to kind of shift here because of [the changes,]” Leatherman said.
For students across the nation, the new ACT brings both relief and uncertainty. Some welcome the shorter sections and reduced fatigue, while others are bracing for tougher math and the adjustment to a test that looks different than before. Soon with college admissions and scholarship applications on the line, all eyes are on how this redesigned ACT will shape scores and the student experience moving forward.
