Article last updated Feb. 2026

In summer 2025, the ACT went through a major overhaul. The test was redesigned, with adjustments to the scoring system, section length, and content.

Test changes are nothing new: the SAT was overhauled in 2024. As always, we’ll keep you apprised of the major ACT changes, along with our recommendations for how students in each class should approach them.

Online vs. Paper ACT: What’s the Difference, and Why Does it Matter?

Before we dive in, it’s important to know that the ACT currently offers two tests: a paper ACT and an online ACT. Many people are unaware that the ACT offers an online test. That’s for two reasons:

  1. The online ACT is offered at very few places, especially in the Philadelphia area. Unlike the digital SAT, for which students bring their own laptops/tablets to test on, the online ACT requires a test center to provide computers to every student.

  2. The online ACT format is poorly designed. Unlike the digital SAT, which is uniquely designed for online testing, with a clean interface and an adaptive nature, the online ACT is essentially just a pdf on a screen. Students looking to maximize their scores will want the paper ACT, where they can annotate, eliminate, easily maneuver between passages and questions, etc. 

The end result? Any student trying to get the highest possible score on the ACT should avoid the online ACT…which shouldn’t be too difficult, given that it’s barely offered in our area. Thus, our recommendations will focus on the paper ACT.

ACT Change Timeline

Paper ACT: The changes laid out below were made to the paper ACT starting with the September 2025 ACT.

What are the ACT Changes

1) The Science section has become optional

The ACT has four sections: English, Math, Reading, and Science, but the overall score now comes from the average of the English, Math, and Reading sections. The Science section–which would more accurately be called ‘Data Science,’ since it mostly tests data analysis and requires little prior science knowledge–has become optional, and is given a separate score that does not affect a student’s overall composite score.

This leads to the crucial question: do colleges still require the optional Science section? Throughout fall 2025, many colleges struggled to give clear answers on this, so we recommended students take the Science. Better safe than sorry, right? But things solidified as we moved into winter 2026, with only a small handful of colleges requiring or recommending ACT Science. At the time of this writing (Feb 2026), here is the short list of colleges requiring or recommending ACT Science:

  • Boston University

  • Georgetown University

  • Duke University (recommended)

  • Other colleges on the list include Pomona (required), Marquette (required), Rochester Institute of Technology (recommended), and Michigan State (recommended)

  • Some colleges may like to see the Science section from STEM majors (especially Bio and Chem) or rquire it for specialized programs (like BS/MD).

  • For up-to-date info on college policies, please check out these resources (Compass Prep and Edison Prep) , published by our National Test Prep Association colleagues who are tracking this even more closely than we are.

The recommendation for students: if your college list does not include any of the schools listed above, there’s no need to take ACT Science.

2) A shorter ACT, with fewer questions

Number of questions on the new ACT

3) More time per question.

The ACT, a notoriously fast test, will ease its very strict time limits and give students more time per question.

4) Difficulty level and content changes

Update: Nov. 2025. Here’s what we’ve seen so far about difficulty level changes on each section.

  • English: More difficult. The English section on the old ACT often the easiest section for students to improve on, simply by mastering grammar skills. English on the new ACT has become significantly more challenging, mostly because the section now tests a lower proportion of grammar questions and a higher proportion of rhetorical skills questions. Also, in trimming down the number of grammar questions, ACT seems to have mostly removed the easier grammar questions, leaving the harder grammar questions intact.

  • Math: More difficult. The Math section has become more challenging. In going from 60 questions down to 45, it seems that the ACT has mostly removed the easier math questions, leaving the harder math questions intact (just like the grammar question on the English section!). The new ACT includes a variety of somewhat obscure and challenging math concepts. However, advanced math on the ACT isn’t new, but potentially just an amplification: the ACT Math has always tested a wide variety of concepts and gone into pre-calc topics for the hardest questions (unlike the SAT, which pretty much stops at Algebra 2). Also, the new Math section has somewhat compensated for its difficulty with a relatively generous scale: in one example, students could miss 7 questions and still score a 33.

  • Reading: More manageable to finish within the time limits. The Reading section added 5 minutes and removed 4 questions. The difficulty level of the passages and questions appears to have remained unchanged. The old ACT Reading section was an absolute race—most students could not finish Reading within in the time limits. Many students only got through 1/2 or 2/3 of the old ACT Reading section, even when working at their fastest. The new ACT Reading is still a fast section, but it has become significantly more manageable than it was.

  • Science: Essentially unchanged, with a little more time per question. The Science section added 5 minutes and kept the number and the difficulty level of questions the same, thus technically making the section easier. While the number of questions has stayed the same (40), the number of passages has increased from 6 to 7. Each new passage requires a little time to digest, so this does chip away at the new five minutes that have been added to the section time. Also, it’s important to know that the vast majority of ACT Science questions require no prior science knowledge—they can be answered exclusively using the tables, graphs, and passages provided. The “outside information” questions that do require science knowledge accounted for only about 10% of all Science questions on the old ACT. ACT claims to be aiming to add more questions that require prior science knowledge, but on the October ACT, we saw an amount of “outside information” questions that were consistent with past ACTs—about 10% of all questions.

If you’re curious how we know all this, this info comes from:

  1. The official ACT released practice material.

  2. Scouring the test prep world for secondhand reports from the September 2025 ACT.

  3. The October 2025 ACT, which Eric and Colin went in and took (yes, in a high school, with the students) in order to learn everything we could about the new ACT. (As a member of the National Test Prep Association, we received a special exemption from the ACT to be allowed to take the test.)

Recommendation for Class of 2027 and Beyond: Try a Diagnostic ACT.

Update: Feb 2026.

In the past, we STRONGLY recommended that students try both a diagnostic SAT and ACT, if their goal was to get the highest possible score. We are now returning to the recommendation that ALL students try a diagnostic ACT, unless their schedule and timeline does not allow.

While many students ultimately perform similarly on both the SAT and ACT, it’s always ideal to identify if you’re one of the exceptions, and then take the test that’s better for you. Sign up for a diagnostic practice ACT to see if it might give you the chance at a higher score than the SAT.