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The ACT is a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States. It was first introduced in November 1959 by University of Iowa professor Everett Franklin Lindquist as a competitor to the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). It is currently administered by ACT, a nonprofit organization of the same name.

The ACT originally consisted of four tests: English, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Natural Sciences. In 1989, however, the Social Studies test was changed into a Reading section (which included a social sciences subsection) and the Natural Sciences test was renamed the Science Reasoning test, with more emphasis on problem-solving skills as opposed to memorizing scientific facts. In February 2005, an optional Writing test was added to the ACT, mirroring changes to the SAT that took place in March of the same year. In 2013, ACT announced that students would be able to take the ACT by computer starting in the spring of 2015;[13] however, by the fall of 2017, computer-based ACT tests were available only for school-day testing at limited school districts in the US, with greater availability not expected until at least the fall of 2018.

The ACT has seen a gradual increase in the number of test takers since its inception, and in 2011 the ACT surpassed the SAT for the first time in total test takers; that year, 1,666,017 students took the ACT and 1,664,479 students took the SAT. All four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. accept the ACT, but different institutions place different emphases on standardized tests such as the ACT, compared to other factors including class rank, GPA, and extracurricular activities.

 

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