ACT
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The ACT is a standardized college entrance exam that over millions of students take worldwide. After the ACT was created to assess students’ potential academic progress at college in 1959, it has analyzed students’ academic ability in high school core courses and has provided a standardized, official measure of students who are studying in many different countries in the world.
Anyone who wants to apply for universities can take ACT. Age and educational background do not matter. The only condition required to register for ACT is to pay for the test fee. You can take ACT more than once, and you can select a single score to send it to universities. ACT is different from other standardized test for college entrance in that you do not have to send all of your previous testing records.
ACT includes English proficiency test, reading comprehension test, math test, and science test. You can also take an optional 30-minute writing test. The test is composed of total 215 questions, and ACT takes total 3 hours 30 minutes to finish. If you decide to take an optional writing test, the it would take total 4 hours.
WHY YOU CHOOSE ACT?
ACT is a standardized test for college entrance. Most universities prefer either ACT or SAT. ACT might be a better choice for students because ACT is a test based on high school curriculum. In other words, students will be preparing for ACT throughout their highschool and will be ready to take the test anytime. If students study hard, it is possible to improve the score in a short period of time. However, depending on students' ability, the difficulty students experience while preparing for ACT might be very different.
For some students, taking both the SAT and ACT will be a great option because they can select the one with the higher score and increase their chance of being accepted. Also, taking ACT may provide other advantages such as scholarship and qualification of school programs. For example, some universities with special programs for middle school students do require minimum ACT score to students. In addition, students may be qualified to a special scholarship provided by universities if they have a minimum ACT score that universities require. Therefore, taking the ACT will give students opportunities and advantages. As a result, since taking both SAT and ACT have many advantages, we recommend students to take both.
GRADING
In all sections of the test, students are graded based on the number of questions they answered correctly. There is no penality for choosing wrong answers, so students are recommended to fill the blank as much as they can. The number of correct answers the student got will be compared with other students who took the same test, and then the score is transformed into a scaled score from 1 to 36.
ACT total score is just the average score of four test sections. ACT writing test is optional. If you decide to take the ACT writing test, your essay will be graded by two evaluators, and each evaluator can give you a grade from 1 to 6. The combined score of two evaluators will be your final writing score, and it will be considered as a part of the English section test score. The scale of the combined English/writing score is from 1 to 36. English score covers 2/3, and the writing score covers 1/3 of the final combined score. There will be essay feedbacks from two evaluator on your report card.
Other than the standardized score, all students will also receive a rank depending on their score percentile. This is used to compare your result with other test takers’ scores, and the percentile shows the percentage of students who received a lower score than you. For example, if you received a 75% percentile, this means that 75% of students who took the same test received a score lower than yours. Since the table that transfroms the standardized score to a percentile rank is annually updated, percentiles recorded in a specific year may also be similar in another year.
WHAT TO BRING ON TEST DAY
· Minimum 2 pencils
· Approved Calculator(scientific/graphing calculator except TI-92 is allowed, but you should check the ACT Calculator Policy on the official ACT web site)
· ID with a recent photograph (required) that clearly matches the test taker (Besides school ID card, a driver’s license is also valid.)
· Water and small snacks to eat during break time
Keeping pace with the rapidly changing educational trend, Steven academy offers a variety of classes preparing not just for the high schools and universities in the United States and other parts of the world, but also for the domestic international schools and universities admissions. The classes are offered in various levels so that the students not only can prepare for the admission tests which include recognition evaluation, English in-depth interview, and essay, but also can keep up with the intensive classes for SAT, AP, IBT, and other school subjects.