Changes to the ACT Breaks Tradition

As the March 9 deadline approaches, the juniors of HUHS are starting to prepare for the ACT test, despite colleges around the country not requiring inputted scores for admissions in 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a whole lot of change for the world. Unsurprisingly, the education system has been one of the most leading revised areas.

With the required social distancing rules and regulations, HUHS now will only have eight students per classroom, instead of the normal 16, ACT Coordinator Stevy Schliewe said.

The preparation process for the ACT hasn’t been affected by these rules and guidelines though.

“ACT provides a number of [practice] tests and tutorials online for students. There are also many free resources online for students to use by searching, “ACT Test Prep,’” Schliewe said. “Most of the ACT preparation is strategies for answering questions, not content study guides.”

The average composite score for the ACT of 2019-2020 across the United States is 20.6, according to the report by PrepScholar. Wisconsin falls just below the average, with a composite score of 20.1.

Wisconsin is one of 15 states that have made the ACT a requirement for their high school curriculum. Recently, some confusion and uncertainty has arised in regards to standardized testing, as colleges across the country have recently changed their requirement levels for the SAT or ACT for the incoming class of 2025. Although most places don’t have a required score for their applicants to meet, in previous years reported test scores were absolutely necessary for admission.

Although Milwaukee considered the ACT required, UW-Milwaukee admissions officer Rachel Stern comments on how GPA and class selection were deemed more important.

“In general, UW-Milwaukee reviews applications for new freshmen on a holistic/comprehensive basis. That means that there are no set minimums for GPA and test scores and our admissions office reviews all application materials,” Stern said. “The high school transcript, grades and classes are typically given the ‘greatest’ weight when reviewing for admissions – as that is the best indicator of college readiness. Performance on standardized tests is only one factor considered in the admission process.”

But now, colleges across the country aren’t requiring submitted standardized test scores, at least for the incoming university classes of 2025.

In the New York Times article “ More Colleges Are Waiving SAT and ACT Requirements,” it’s reported that the University of California system will be slowly fading out the SAT and ACT for a new, individualized test come 2024.

Even Ivy League schools, like Harvard College, Cornell University, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, are being more lenient.

Harvard sent out a written statement: “Students who do not submit standardized testing this coming year will not be disadvantaged in the application process” and that “the COVID-19 pandemic has created insurmountable challenges in scheduling tests for all students.” While Princeton's approach was just to heavily remind their applicants that standardized scores are a small portion of the application.

UW-Milwaukee is only one of many that followed suit, acknowledges Stern.

“This has been an overall change in higher education across the country – many universities and colleges have changed requirements for test scores.” Stern said. “Given the circumstances of COVID-19 and testing not be available, many colleges and universities did not want this to negatively impact college admissions either, and changed requirements for test scores as well.”

Despite the general consensus to not prioritize the ACT or SAT, standardized tests are still acknowledged as necessary. Junior Isabella Friedl, although thinks the ACT isn’t a true measurement of intelligence, thinks that it still has some merit.

“In general I don't typically like standardized testing, it's hard on students, and is not all a very true test of what they actually know,” Friedl said. “Though I still feel it's something that should not go away. While it might not be the most accurate, it is a different way of seeing what skills a student has and how they are able to perform in certain situations.”

Both GradePower Learning and Whitby in their respective “Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing” articles reach the conclusion that Friedl and Stern have already previously made. Standardized testing is just another point to be measured, another point to be looked at, and shouldn’t hold this life-or-death power over stressing students.

Whitby author Bryan Nixon states in the article that “standardized testing is truthfully a very difficult issue, because we do need internal and external assessments to measure student success,” Nixon writes. “Schools and parents should always look at standardized tests not as a value judgement on the student, but as an additional data point that can provide some perspective on student learning.”