Main content
College admissions
Course: College admissions > Unit 2
Lesson 4: Standardized tests- Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy
- Facing the standardized tests
- Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy
- How to register for the SAT
- Deciding whether to retake the SAT
- Overview of the ACT
- Deciding whether to retake the ACT
- Preparing yourself for success on the tests
- Student story: Standardized tests
© 2023 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Overview of the ACT
Want to join the conversation?
- What's the difference between the ACT and SAT?(35 votes)
- The ACT covers a broader set of knowledge (e.g including science) and requires answering more questions than the SAT. Students who excel at problem solving and have a strong 'natural' aptitude for math and verbal skills tend to do well SAT, whereas students who can move fast and solve many problems across domains, tend to perform slightly better on the ACT.
Students interested in competitive colleges often take both to assess which test they perform better on. If you are considering applying to a college with competitive admissions, it is wise to take both tests and then focus on the one with the better score.(24 votes)
- Are there any pages on Khan that covers mainly all the Math Section of the ACT ?(21 votes)
- Math is math. Even though the math exercises on Khan Academy don't say "ACT math section", they still help you learn math, which means they'll still help you pass the math section of the ACT.(13 votes)
- If taking the ACT, are colleges more likely to accept you if you've taken and done well on the writing option?(14 votes)
- It depends on the college. The more selective the college, the more likely that they'll expect you to have taken the writing section and done well on it.(13 votes)
- cant you just make an act test prep section already(6 votes)
- Unfortunately, because of a deal Khan Academy made with The College Board, KA will never have an ACT test prep section. If you are looking for ways to prepare for the ACT, I would recommend using Princeton Review's book, "Cracking the ACT", as well as Veritas Prep's book, "Up Your Score ACT". Both of these books are very helpful.
Hope this helps you!(19 votes)
- What is the difference between the essay of the SAT VS ACT(8 votes)
- the SAT is more pulling information directly from a written paper they give you and the emphasis is on simply delivering information with no bias or opinion. the ACT is specifically an essay where you choose an opinion and defend it. You are given a significantly shorter prompt and no "data" or external sources to pull from except what is already in your head.(4 votes)
- Are they going to make the ACT prep?(5 votes)
- KA will not be making ACT prep, because of an agreement they made with the College Board. However, prepscholar.com has an article outlining how to use Khan Academy for ACT prep.
Here is a link to the article:
https://blog.prepscholar.com/khan-academy-act-prep
(Warning: Link goes off of KA)(6 votes)
- what is the difference between the english and the reading section?(4 votes)
- the english section tests more grammar oriented things, like finding the error in the sentence. the reading section tests more reading comprehension(11 votes)
- I'm in 8th grade I want to take the ACT or SAT can anyone suggest which one is better and why?(2 votes)
- It depends on the person, honestly. Personally, I preferred the ACT because there was a science section and the English/critical reading questions did not appear as convoluted as the SAT's. Other people may prefer the SAT for similar reasons. My suggestion is to take both once and then see which one you are better at/prefer and then go from there.(10 votes)
- Apparently, there has been a change to the writing section recently, what has been changed?(4 votes)
- For the ACT, I'm aware of no significant change, but the new SAT completely abolishes the writing portion of the test.(4 votes)
- can't Khan academy just make a subdivision of their company for test preps/state tests to support ACT? (FYI this is a repeat I just felt like it fit in two places).(2 votes)
- Request new features at KA this way:
Khan Academy is always looking for new ways to improve our site! The best way to get visibility on your feature idea is to go to the Support Community section of our Help Center. You can also find a link directly to the Support Community here.
You must be sure to be logged in to Khan Academy to submit feedback on the Help Center. You can see if someone else has already suggested your idea and if so, you can add your votes to it and comment. If no one else has suggested it, you can be the first and others will be able to vote up your idea!(3 votes)
Video transcript
- This is Sean Logan. Let's talk a little bit
about the ACT in testing. The ACT is a standardized
test that many schools will require as part of
the admissions process. Based on my work as a
college admission officer, schools really have no preference
for the tests you take. Let's spend a little time
talking about the ACT. The purpose of taking a standardized test is really to allow
colleges to use a benchmark for students against other students from across the US and internationally. An A in an English class in one school could mean something
totally different than an A in an English class in another school. So it is one way that schools
can look at a national exam. Currently for the ACT, there
are four sections to it. There's an English section,
there's a Reading section, there's a Math section, and
there's a Science section. There is one optional
Essay section that students can choose to do. The format for the test really includes multiple choice questions. In the English section,
you've got 75 questions in about a 45 minute time period. In the Reading section, you've
got another 40 questions and that's in a 35 minute time period. In the Math section, you've
got 60 questions in 60 minutes. In the Science section,
you've got 40 questions and that's in about 35 minutes. The cost of the test is about $52.50. If you take it without
the writing section, it's a little bit less expensive. It's $36.50. The cost of the test
should never be a barrier. If you feel like you need
help paying for the cost of the test, please see
your college counselor, or your guidance counselor. There are fee waivers available,
which means you can take this test for free. Your college, or hopefully, your college or guidance counselor can help you get the appropriate fee waivers to do that. Timing for taking the ACT. Most students should be planning out when to take their testing. I would recommend thinking
about taking the ACT probably in the winter or
spring of your junior year. Then, probably taking it twice. Most students do better when
they take it a second time, so either taking late in the
spring of your junior year, for a second time, or using
the fall of your senior year. So the scoring, each of the four sections has a score ranging between a one and 36. These scores are averaged together to get your Composite Score, which is also between a one and a 36. So let's take a look at this score report. For each of the sections, they can see how they did at a high level. The overall section scores are out of 36. There's a perfect score in reading of 36, and the lowest of the four sections is in Science, which is a 28. Other sections have
sub-scores which lets you see if there was one area that
was stronger than another. In the English area for
instance, the student did slightly better on the Usage
and Mechanics questions than compared to the
Rhetorical Skills questions. This information allows the
student to target and study what they need to do better on,
or what they need to retake. The Composite score is an
average of the English, the Math, the Reading,
and the Science scores. If you use this example,
let's do the Math. You take a 32, a 35, a 36, and a 28, and you add that up, you get 131. You divide it by four,
and this person's score is a 32.75, which rounds up to a 33. So their Composite is a 33. The 33 puts them at the 99th percentile, which basically means
they have scored higher than 99 percent of the people
who have taken the test. Obviously this is a really
good score on the ACT.