The February ACT is now upon all juniors, with the test on Wednesday, Feb. 25. Students have been stressed and have tried to cram and study as much as possible, while they balance their school work on top of it, and a lot of students could get overwhelmed this way. With this test in the middle of the school year could affect scores in a negative way, but it just matters how much the student wants to put in. But what a lot of students don’t realize is that the ACT is not about “being smart”, it’s about your brian to think in the weird and different ways the ACT test-makers want you to. 

First, the test-makers want to determine your ability to work in a timed manner, every test contains a certain time limit. The ability to work well and be able to plan out your time and use it wisely, is a huge part of what colleges want to see you do well in. The math section is 50 minutes with 45 questions, reading is 40 minutes with 36 questions, and English is a 35-minute section with 50 questions, so English is the most important section to manage your time and plan out how fast you want to answer each question.

The next part of the ACT is that it isn’t about how smart you are and the test doesn’t measure your IQ, it just measures your college readiness and how prepared you are to work at a college level. Which I think is a smart way to go about the test. Because a lot of students need to know how ready they are for college-level courses, and without the ACT, students could be overwhelmed with the amount and level of work that shifts when you transition from high school to college. So even though the preparation and the test itself may be tedious and stressful, it is a very good tool to set yourself up for success in college, and gets you ready for the workload and types of work you will get in these college types of classes.

And lastly, your mindset for the test is one of the most important parts about the test, maybe even more important than all the preparation you did for the test. The ACT can intimidate a lot of students and can seem scary. A four hour test that decides your future in college. But if students go into the test with a positive mindset and with the belief that they can get the highest score possible, it will boost your score more than you would think.

Overall, I think the ACT is a test that everyone should take serious. It has its perks and flaws, but overall, I think that it has its place and is a very important test for high school students to learn and get prepared for college in the best way possible.