The American College Test or ACT is a standardized college admission test that measures the student’s abilities in the core subjects taught in high school. ACT helps to impartially assess a student's potential for success in college and assist colleges in admission by providing a standardized measurement of the ability of students from different schools across the world.

Individuals with different educational backgrounds and ages can take the ACT, including middle school students, high school graduates, and adults who want to return to college. A student can take the ACT more than once and select the scores to be sent to colleges for review.

ACT is a three and a half hour test and has four mandatory subject tests- English, Reading, Mathematics, and Science, and one optional 30 minute Writing. The test has 215 questions.

TIME	SECTIONS
35 minutes	Reading
40 minutes	English
60 minutes	Mathematics
35 minutes	Science Reasoning

Admission Calendar:
You can take ACT five times a year all over the United States -in February (except in the state of New York), April, June, October and December. And on an additional date in September you can take ACT in the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Washington.

Dates for SAT exams for 2007-08:

DATES	LAST DATE FOR REGISTERATION
15 September 2007	16 August 2007
27 October 2007	1 October 2007
8 December 2007	2 November 2007
9 February 2008	4 January 2008
12 April 2008	7 March 2008
14 June 2008	9 May 2008

 NOTE:

1. September 15, 2007, test date is available only in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia.
2. February 2008 test is not scheduled in New York due to special requirements of legislation in effect in that state. This restriction may continue for the 2008–2009 testing year.

How is ACT organized?

Time	Subject	Number of Questions
	Reading
35 minutes	4 passages one each on prose fiction, social science, humanities and natural sciences in that order	40
	English
45minutes	10 punctuations, 12 Basic Grammar and usage, 18 sentence structure and 35 Rhetorical Skills	75
	Math
60 minutes	14 Pre-algebra, 10 Elementary Algebra, 9 Intermediate Algebra, 9 Co-ordinate Geometry, 14 Plane Geometry and 4 Trigonometry	24
	Writing
35 minutes	7 passages consisting of graphs, charts and explanatory text	40

ACT Scoring:
The subjects are graded separately, according to the total number of correct answers a student has for a particular section. Points are not reduced for incorrect answers, so that you can guess and go on. The correct answers give your raw score which is compared to all other students who took that same test and converted to a "scaled score" from 1 to 36. Scaling is done to maintain consistency between ACT tests.

* Have questions? See Frequently Asked Questions.