Should you take an official ACT as a baseline exam?
The most representative test you can take as a baseline for the ACT is, no surprise, an official ACT. Taking the ACT as an official test will give you an idea of timing, content, and where you’re scoring right then. In addition, it will give you a “just in case score,” a score you can send to colleges just in case an emergency (or a pandemic) prevents you from being able to sit for another exam. However, taking an official ACT has a variety of outcomes that you should be prepared for before you head into an official test for a baseline.
Unless you register for a Test Information Release (TIR) ACT date, you will not be able to review the actual questions you answered incorrectly from their score report. Taking an official ACT is great for getting a read of the current content on the test, but the score report will only give you a broad overview of what concepts to work on as opposed to being able to work through exactly what you missed. To avoid this, consider registering for the April, June, or December TIR test dates, which would allow you to receive a blank copy of the exam you took.
You may get discouraged by a score lower than you expected. Your score may surprise you in a not-so-great way. That is completely okay and expected; where you start won’t be where you end. However, receiving a low score can cause you to lose motivation from being overwhelmed by what you don’t know or by the prospect of the amount of work you’ll need to put in to achieve your goal. If you tend to get discouraged easily, you may want to consider taking an official released practice test in a low-risk environment as opposed to an official test. Taking your baseline exam in an environment where you feel safe being wrong is the best way to figure out where you need to make improvements and create a plan that will get you to a point where you feel confident sitting for an official test.
The unscored first section of the ACT collects information from you that is viewable to participating colleges, called the EOS report. Colleges can access predictive information that ACT measures based on your self-listed academic history, parent educational history, college major, and any other information you provide. Colleges that are test-blind for admissions purposes (e.g. Cal Poly SLO) can access this information on you, meaning that your responses in this survey will be connected to your name fif you decide to apply. This is particularly important if you do not yet have a short list of colleges and/or expect your college plans (e.g. school size, major) to change prior to application time, as you may accidentally put yourself lower on the list of a college you want to pursue if the college traits don’t match your responses in the survey.
Sitting for an ACT exam date will lower your registration priority on future exam dates. With ACT test sites at lower capacity, there is more competition for spots than in previous years. Registration priority is highest for seniors and decreases with each younger graduating class, with the exception of students who have already taken an official exam. If you sign up for an exam site and they need to lower capacity or are overbooked, students who have already had a chance to sit for an exam date will be the first to be rescheduled to a later exam date. This has been a notable issue for current juniors during the pandemic who have seen numerous rescheduling emails, even though the site is still able to host the exam for a smaller number of students. The concern in taking an official test for a baseline and automatically reducing your priority ranking would be the possibility that you sit for a baseline exam but not another test before you need to submit scores to colleges, meaning the only score sent off to colleges is your lowest score.
Your score may not be representative of your true knowledge or ability. This applies specifically to you if you have already started preparing for the test or trying out different strategies. A baseline is intended to convey what you know before you start trying to mediate for your gaps. If you take an official test after you’ve started to learn new material or change your approach for the baseline, your score may actually be lower than when you started. To show progress or build up your score, you have to do a lot of relearning old concepts, which takes time to be established in long-term memory recall. In the meantime, implementing this new information or strategy will temporarily slow you down and may reflect in your score.
