Unfair testing?

50 million people have taken the ACTs prior to you. Somehow they have survived it, and more to the point, it is accurate enough that the colleges have depended on it for 60 years as an indicator of potential and suitability for college.

Therefore, I think it’s unlikely that your opinion, honest as it is, means a darned thing. I think you’re nervous about the test.

The fact is that it must be assessing something correctly, or it wouldn’t be in use.

You’ll be fine. My son was concerned about the same thing before he took the ACT’s and he blew it out of the water. They don’t expect you to answer all 60 question. Take a deep breath and do the best you can. Go through and answer the questions you know, then go back and work on the other questions.

I am not familiar with the ACT or SAT tests. Having received my education through a vastly different educational system, I can say that while getting ready for college/university there is always a series of such seemingly impossible tests. The goal is to assess the knowledge the student has readily available. In general such tests do not require you to answer everything.

Stay focused and go for it! Good luck:-)

It seems unfair, but it is as fair as possible.

I say that because everyone is under the same time constraint. It’s not like the people in New Jersey have an 60 minutes for math, but the kids in Oklahoma get 72 minutes and those in Oregon only get 53 minutes.

The test is structured to put everyone under the same pressure.

You’re sort of asking two questions:

* Is the test reliable? I think the answer is certainly yes. If you retake it, you’ll likely to keep scoring similarly, without serious study anyway. In this sense, it’s fair.

* Is the test valid? Does it measure what it says it measures? Maybe.

The second is the more tricky question because I don’t know if the makers of the test quite know what the fuck it is supposed to do. It’s probably fair to say that people who do really badly on it aren’t very prepared for university study, but I think there is also problem where meticulous and progressive thinkers probably don’t do as well as people who just good at shooting out knowledge they memorized. The latter are probably, at least in some ways, less intelligent than the former. Smart people get bored with repetition, dumber people deal with it better. That’s why the accounts receivable lady always has Kelly Bundy’s brains and Edith Bunker’s looks – she is the only type of person who can do that work decade after decade.

The point of having that many questions in such a short time is that your score is also determined by how many you can answer in a high pressure environment. So, don’t guess on questions, if you are having trouble with one skip it and come back to it if you have time.

@amujinx points to a validity problem. I’m not sure how being so fast correlates to performing in a university environment, but then supposedly SAT scores correlate to GPAs. Not sure about ACT.

I was so intimidated by the SAT’s I chose not to take them. In a graduating class of over 700, only 2 of us refused to take that test. I now wish I had, but at the time it was too stressful for me.

It can be almost pointless. You can circumvent any need for the SAT by going to community college and then transferring the credits. You maybe save some money too.

I wasn’t complaining about it…I thought the questions were easy, it’s just difficult to read them efficiently and form an understanding in the time given.
I know pretty much everyone’s taken the ACT and lived…but they probably made the average score or below. There’s a lot of pressure on me from my family to get a 30 or above. And I wouldn’t be happy for myself with anything less…

The ACT actually does encourage you to complete all the questions. It even says on the test booklet, “It is to your benefit to complete all questions even if you have to guess.”

I’m just not sure it’s a very accurate test.
For instance, I’m really good at reading comprehension but on the test you are given 35 minutes to complete 40 questions and read 4–5 passages that have at least 6 paragraphs. You’d think you could just skim it but the questions were super in-depth to where you’d have to read the entire passage to answer it correctly. So some the questions I had to make a best guess on based on context. If my reading score turns out to be low, that doesn’t accurately represent my actual reading comprehension capabilities.

All in all, it was sort of easy for me except that on the math portion you really don’t have enough time to figure out a problem where the formula or process required to solve it isn’t immediately apparent.
I just see it as, given more time to actually think about a problem, I (and others)could score better.

(I understand the need for high-pressure testing though)

I was a HS teacher for 9 years- I think the test is chock-full of bull-hokey. I do not think it is accurate at all. It is one snapshot of a student’s ability—unfortunately many people see it as a measurement of the kid’s whole ability. It is NOT.

The SAT tests your ability to figure out what they want you to answer—not so much your knowledge, but your ability to read critically and figure answers out from the context. The math questions sometimes do not require actual computation—you can save time by looking at the answers, canceling out the impossible answers then working backwards. It tests your ability to figure things out more than anything.

The ACT involves knowing more actual academic materials, but still, they want you to tell them what they think is the right answer. With the ACT, it helps to have a strong academic background.

There are many little tricks to getting higher scores—like reading the questions first, not the passages. If they ask for an opinion/fact differentiation, you don’t need to read the passage for that. Only read the passages for what the questions are asking for. It sounds like you might you already know that…

I used to tell my students to go all Zen on the test—think about it as if they’re playing a video game. Shut out distractions, don’t allow any anxiety, focus, and think fast.

Were you able to get one of those practice books?

@Feta If you answered the questions the way you wrote your last post, don;t be surprised by a low score. It’s not probable they made the average score or below. The same number made the average score or above.

The ACT tests your ability to think through what is presented to you.

The accuracy of tests such as the SAT and the ACT is debatable- they are probably more stress-inducing than they are accurate, but they are a fact of life unless you are applying to a university that doesn’t require you to submit test scores (there aren’t many, but they are out there).

I took the ACT once about three years ago, and there are a few tricks to help increase your score if you choose to take it again. (And don’t be afraid to take the test a second time if you don’t get a score you’re happy with- colleges don’t count it against you, and you have a fair enough chance of improving.)

In the reading and English sections, it is helpful to read the questions before you read the passages. That way you know exactly what you are looking for when you go to read the text, which really speeds up the process. You may even be able to answer some questions as you go, instead of having to repeatedly refer back to the text.

The ACT also counts incorrect answers the same as they do leaving a question blank, so yes, it is to your benefit to guess. If you get to a point in any section where you feel that you don’t have enough time to fully read and answer questions, just start guessing on the remaining questions. Is it the most accurate measure of your intelligence? No, but it is unfortunately the nature of the test.

Don’t spend your money on practice books or prep classes for either the ACT or the SAT. In both tests, your success is really based on knowing the types of questions they ask. Both tests provide a great deal of practice/example questions for free on their websites, and those are truly the most helpful. It has been shown that SAT prep courses are highly unlikely to improve your score more than about 30 points (out of 2400 possible points), which is the equivalent of less than 1 point on the ACT. So in short, the free resources are your best bet.

If you don’t like this grading system or would rather not deal with the pretty pointless science portion of the test, you might prefer the SAT, which doesn’t count blank answers against you. I’ve taken that a few times and have more experience with that test, so if you decide to take it, feel free to message me if you have any questions.

@Fly Good answer.

I want to add information about the books… I agree that most of the books really don’t help on the test, except one set.

The ACT for Dummies, SAT for Dummies, GRE for Dummies books do give practical, non-nonsense, easy to access information. They also help with knowing what to expect when you walk in. Knowing what to expect helped alleviate my testing anxiety when I took the GRE 15 years out of school. These helped my students the most.

The rest are overpriced, irrelevant, more complicated than necessary.