Enhanced ACT Math Scouting Report
We finally have some Enhanced ACTs! Are the questions different? How about the balance of problem types? How will the changes affect how I tutor? Can you use Desmos? With four new tests in hand, I set out to answer these questions.
First, a quick overview of the major changes:
You have 50 minutes to answer 45 questions (instead of 60 for 60).
80% of the questions are now what they call “Preparing For Higher Math” (previously 57-60%).
Only 20% of the questions are now “Integrating Essential Skills” (previously 40-43%).
4 of the 45 questions are “field test” items, meaning that only 41 of them count in your score.
I started by tagging all of the questions, adding up how frequently each tag appeared, and then comparing the results to the stats of the “legacy” version (the one students are still able to take through July). Tagging was pretty easy because…I’d already tagged three of them before. These are all old tests: C01, C03, E23, and 24MC11. Vinny Madera of Test Prep Wizards kindly provided me with a list showing the relationship between these old tests and the ‘new’ ones.
Knowing that these questions were all borrowed from old tests, I was particularly curious to see how the questions were sampled. Would they simply choose three out of every four questions, thus preserving the current balance of easy/medium/hard questions?
No. On average, they used 13 of the last 15 questions (#46 - 60) from every test. They only used about 20 of the middle 30 questions (#16 - 45) from each test. Interestingly, they used a slightly higher percent of the first 15 questions (roughly 75% of them). Based on this, I think students will still feel a lot of time pressure on these new math sections. And the test will feel harder a little earlier than they expect.
I was also curious about the big categories, given the greater percentage of “Preparing For Higher Math” problem types. This chart helps me visualize the changes:
Unsurprisingly, there were fewer slope, basic Algebra, and “pre-Algebra” questions. Previously, these three categories accounted for almost one-third of the test. On these four tests, more like2 a quarter fell into those categories. There weren’t nearly as many questions about order of operations, absolute value, ax + b = c, or simple algebra translation. There also weren’t as many Area, Perimeter, Volume questions – things like triangle area and circle area. But they did have a greater proportion of Quadratics and Beyond Quadratics questions. Interestingly, you can’t see this in the chart, but the percentage of fraction-related questions did not change that much.
Other notes:
It looks like you might be able to use Desmos, but that tool was not available in their online practice test interface (which you can find on this page). Desmos does have a version of its ACT-specific tool here, and some reddit kids have talked about using it…but that may only be in a state-version of the test. So I’m not sure yet3 — the book doesn’t mention it. If you can use it, it does not look like you can use the regression functions, but you can still solve Systems easily, which is probably why there were fewer of them on the four released tests.
It’s a little hard to tell what the curves will be like. On two of the tests, you could miss 6 out of 41 and still get a 33. On another, -6 yielded a 32. On the fourth, -6 was a 31.
On that note, it looks like there will be even more variation in scores, especially at the high end of the test. See their official report for more details, especially the section with this comforting title: “As Anticipated, the Enhanced ACT Has Lower Reliability Than the Legacy ACT”.
Another useful passage from that report: “Enhanced ACT Scores are Highly Correlated with Prior ACT Scores”. The old tests are going to be very useful for skill practice, even if the formats are different.
that’s the one I hadn’t tagged yet
with only 4 tests, I’m going to be using some vague language at times…but I’m only including statistics that seem directionally correct.
Thanks to Paul Oberman for clarifying that the Desmos policy is still ambiguous right now.