The ACT is a standardized test designed to show colleges how prepared you are for higher education by measuring your reading comprehension, knowledge of writing conventions, and computational skills, and then comparing you to the rest of the high school students who take it.

​

The ACT consists of four sections—English, Math, Reading, and Science—plus an optional Writing section, or essay. With the exception of the essay, the test is entirely multiple choice: the Math questions each have five answer choices, while the rest have four.

​

For each section of the test, you'll get a raw score, which is the number of questions you get right. That is then converted into a scaled score between 1 and 36. The composite score is simply the average of your four ACT section scores (the Writing score is left out because it's optional).

This char

 

Generally speaking, though, it's ideal to take the ACT for the first time in the fall or winter of your junior year, when you've covered most of the material in school but still have time to retake the test if needed.t quantifies the basic structure of the test. For more details on what's actually on the ACT, you can follow the links to full breakdowns of each section.

 

The following chart breaks down the format of the test: