Say Yes to the ACT on Paper
Not everything is better in a digital format
I’ve been hearing from many students and parents who—despite massive inconvenience and limited practice material—have been registering for digital ACT administrations on national test dates. I understand why students may have to take a computer-based ACT for in-school exams; that format has been standard for years. But when it comes to the Enhanced ACT, digital is not only option but, in my opinion, undesirable.
What’s so great about the ACT on paper?
First and foremost, the ACT is a native paper exam, designed to be best delivered in that modality. One example of this is the length of passages and the number of items per passage. The ACT features long Reading, English, and Science passages, often requiring lots of searching for information to answer multiple questions in a way that is much easier on paper: testing on computer entails lots of scrolling back and forth. The SAT, which is a native digital test, delivers one passage per question with no scrolling required.
Annotation tools on the digital ACT currently fail to fully replicate the underlining, annotation, and sometimes even manual manipulation (e.g. putting your finger on a data point in a graph) required for test success.
You’ll find exponentially more practice material for the paper ACT.
There’s simply no scoring benefit to taking the Enhanced ACT at all during the field testing period and likely no benefit to choosing a digital version even when the Enhanced Exam goes national in September. Sure, the test is shorter, but it’s not better in any other way. Choose paper until you hear a good reason to do otherwise!
(That said, if you are planning on taking the ACT online on a national administration, dig into the only official practice material on the ACT website.)