Enhanced ACT: Will the Enhanced ACT be Easier than the Current ACT?
The ACT is launching a new digital format this spring, sparking questions about whether the Enhanced ACT will be easier. In this Trends in Education update, C2 Education shares what students and families need to know about the changes—including shorter timing, slower pacing, and an optional Science section—and what these updates truly mean for test difficulty and college admissions.
Table of Contents
- Will the Enhanced ACT Be Easier than the Current ACT?
- Test Length Differences
- The Importance of the Science Section
- Pacing vs. Difficulty
- Adaptive Test Misconceptions
- Field Test Questions and Their Impact
Many rumors have been spreading about the upcoming Enhanced ACT, a revamp of the existing ACT that is set to launch digitally this April. The ACT organization has emphasized the Enhanced ACT’s shorter length and more generous timing, leading many to believe the revamped test will be easier than the current version—but that likely isn’t true.
Test Length Differences
The test experience will, indeed, be significantly shorter on the Enhanced ACT, but there’s a big caveat to that. The Enhanced ACT is 50 minutes shorter than the current ACT only because the Science section has become optional on the newer version of the test. The Science section accounts for 40 minutes of the total testing time on the current test. For students choosing to take the optional Science section, the Enhanced ACT will only be 10 minutes shorter than the current test.
The Importance of the Science Section
And students should most definitely opt to take the Science section. ACT notes that it will be up to colleges to decide whether to require the newly optional Science section. Past precedent suggests that selective schools are likely to require a Science score on the new test, so while colleges have yet to make official announcements on this change, students would be wise to assume that they may well need those Science scores for their college applications.
Pacing vs. Difficulty
The ACT has long been known as more of a “sprint” than its competitor, the SAT, providing students with significantly less time per question. The Enhanced ACT addresses this concern by providing students more time per question, especially in the Reading section. This slower pacing has sparked rumors that the Enhanced ACT will be significantly easier than the current ACT. However, ACT has already indicated that they have no plans to update their concordance tables, which means that the test is intended to be just as difficult, requiring the same level of skill to achieve a given score.
Adaptive Test Misconceptions
How can the test have a more generous pacing and fewer questions yet still be just as difficult as it always has been?
One way to address such concerns would be to make the test adaptive, as the College Board did with the SAT in 2024. However, the ACT organization has already clarified that the Enhanced ACT will not be adaptive. Shifting the overall difficulty of the questions to the harder end of the spectrum might also accomplish this goal, but the only sample test released by the ACT so far seems to suggest this isn’t the case either.
Field Test Questions and Their Impact
What will make the test much harder is the inclusion of field test questions throughout the test. The current ACT includes a 5th unscored section that is used to field test questions. The Enhanced ACT will feature unscored field test questions within each section of the test. For example, the Enhanced ACT reading section will include 36 questions, but 9 of those will be unscored field test questions. This means that missing even a single scored question will drop a student’s reading score by more than a point. Students will have far less room for error, adding challenge to the test.
