ACT TIR - Moved Up to September
A good change recently came through for all ACT test takers - the December TIR date has been moved up to a September TIR date. The other two dates (April and June) remain the same for the 2023-2024 testing year.
What is the TIR?
The TIR stands for Test Information Release. It is a copy of the test booklet, your answers, your answer key, and your essay (if you took one). It is only released 3 times a year each for the SAT and ACT and resulted from a settlement that occured in the 90s between Princeton Review and CollegeBoard. Since then, several states have released laws that mandate half of the tests administered must be released to test takers.
California is one such state, though the law was quietly changed during Covid times to allow for only 3 of the 7 tests to be released - previously it had to be half or more, so the July ACT was not administered in California. Now the July exam is administered in the state of California because of the change.
How Can I Use the TIR To My Benefit?
The TIR can tell us a lot of things if you plan on taking the test again. For one, it tells you exactly which questions you missed and which answer you selected. Though the test copy doesn’t show your actual work, you can recreate what likely happened with the copy of the test and your answer. You can also reattempt the questions to see if you know how to do them and it was an execution error (our so-called “careless” mistakes), or if you don’t know how to do them (content gaps), and let those content gaps guide some further studying.
Another illuminating aspect of seeing your TIR is to see if there are any patterns in the questions you missed: are you missing more at the end because you ran out of time, or in the beginning because you’re not quite focused? Are you missing experiment style questions in the Science section, or the Conflicting Viewpoints?
Analyzing why you missed questions can guide your future course of study. We at Mo Prep love to see the TIR’s, for returning students and new students! For returning students, as much as we know which errors you’re prone to with all of our homework drills and mock tests, what you do on test day may still differ from the practice scenarios. Some students perform better on test day, so we know we don’t need to focus on some areas we thought we did have to, and others under-perform on test day, so we can design a customized plan based on that test to appropriately address you test-day gaps.
For new students, the TIR can produce tremendous insight on you as a test-taker before we ever meet you in person. We can get a good sense of the types of errors you’re prone to and tailor our overall plan and individual lessons to your strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you don’t miss any word problems, we won’t waste time on Missed Math drills to increase your translation abilities. If we notice you’re prone to “careless mistakes” in algebra, on the other hand, we’ll come in to our sessions with a list of ideas to try out to see which approach or combination of approaches works the best for you.
How Do I Order the TIR?
You can sign up for it while you are initially registering for your seat, or if you’ve already registered, you can log-in to act.org, go to your registrations, and click the button that says Add TIR. You can also register for it up to 6 months after you’ve taken the test, if you want to wait and see how you did on this test before paying additional money for the report. This is ideal for our seniors who may or may not be done with testing on this September date. You can wait to see your score (which arrives 10 days after testing), and if the score isn’t quite where you want it to be, then go onto act.org and order the TIR. It will still arrive on time.
When Does the TIR Arrive?
The TIR arrives in around 6 weeks via email, and typically just before the next official date. Therefore, you shouldn’t wait to have the TIR in hand to begin studying for the next one - the score itself (and the Score Details that are provided with every test once your score has posted) helps guide us and our plan in many ways, and the TIR will allow us to make any last minute adjustments. Or if you are a Junior, you can plan to sign up for the testing date two dates after the TIR date (i.e. December instead of October), to provide ample time to adjust. We still recommend prepping straight through from the September date to maximize your chances of being done in December, but this allows even more time to adjust based on your test day performance.
Can I Still Get the TIR even if I’m a non-Saturday tester?
You can only get the TIR on non-Saturdays in April. The September and June dates do not allow you to.
