The enhanced ACT, everything that changed

The ACT you sit today is not the test most prep material still describes. As of the full 2025 rollout, the test is shorter, the science section is optional, and the Composite is now the average of just three sections: English, Math and Reading. Science and writing are add-ons that ACT states are “optional and do not affect your Composite score.”

That last point is where most third-party content is still wrong. If a site tells you your Composite is the average of four scores including science, it is describing a test that no longer exists in that form.

The current section structure

Three sections make up the scored core of the test. Science is a fourth section you can choose to add.

Section	Questions administered	Time	Counts toward Composite
English	50	35 min	Yes
Math	45	50 min	Yes
Reading	36	40 min	Yes
Science	40	40 min	No, optional
Writing	1 essay	40 min	No, optional

Each of English, Math and Reading is still reported on the familiar 1-36 scale, and so is science if you take it. Writing is reported separately on a 2-12 scale that, per ACT, “does not affect your composite score.”

The reduction in questions is real, not cosmetic. English dropped from 75 questions to 50. Reading dropped from 40 to 36. Math dropped from 60 to 45, while gaining time per question.

How the composite is now calculated

ACT’s wording is direct: “Your Composite score is the average of your English, math, and reading scores, rounded to the nearest whole number.”

The rounding rule is spelled out too: “Fractions less than one-half are rounded down; fractions one-half or more are rounded up.” That is round-half-up, not banker’s rounding.

So a 32 English, 29 Math and 30 Reading averages to 30.33, which reports as 30. A 32, 30 and 31 averages to 31.0 exactly. A 33, 31 and 32 averages to 32.0. And a 30, 31 and 32 averages to 31.0.

Where the halves matter: 31, 31, 32 gives 31.33, reporting as 31. But 31, 32, 32 gives 31.67, reporting as 32. One question in one section can move the Composite by a full point, or move it not at all, depending on where the average lands relative to the halfway mark.

You can work this through on our ACT score calculator.

What happened to the old four-section average

Under the previous format, science was one of four sections that averaged into the Composite. It no longer is. If you took the ACT before the enhanced format and are comparing an old Composite to a new one, understand that they are averages of different things.

Science has not vanished from score reporting. It still generates its own 1-36 score when you take it, and it still combines with math to produce the STEM score. It simply no longer touches the Composite.

Scored questions are fewer than the questions you answer

This is the detail that breaks most raw score arithmetic. The number of questions on your form is not the number of questions that count. ACT embeds unscored field-test items, so the scored raw maxima are lower than the administered counts.

Section	Administered	Scored raw maximum
English	50	40
Math	45	41
Reading	36	27
Science	40	34

Reading is the extreme case. You answer 36 questions and 27 of them count. That is a quarter of the section you cannot score points on, and you have no way to identify which ones they are while testing.

The practical consequence is that “I got 30 out of 36 on reading” is not a statement your ACT scale score responds to directly. The scoring works from the 27 scored items, and you do not know your standing on those until the score arrives.

Conversion tables are form specific

There is no universal ACT raw-to-scale chart, and there never really was. Conversion tables differ materially between forms. The same raw score can produce different scale scores on two different test dates, because each form is equated to account for its own difficulty.

This is the same problem the digital SAT has in a different shape, which we cover in how the digital SAT is scored. Any tool, including ours, that gives you a scale score from a raw score is applying one published table to a form it may not describe.

If you are working from an official practice test, use the table printed with that test. If you are working from a real administration, only ACT knows your form’s table.

Superscoring changed too

The ACT Superscore Composite is now built the same way as a single-sitting Composite: from your best English, Math and Reading scores across test dates. Science is excluded from the Superscore Composite, according to ACT’s superscore guidance.

If you sat the ACT more than once and one of those sittings predates the change, your superscore arithmetic is not a simple carry-forward. Check what ACT actually reports rather than assuming.

The principle is the same one that governs SAT superscoring, which we cover in SAT superscoring explained: the score you calculate at home is not the score an institution uses unless its policy says so.

Concordance with the SAT is now more approximate than it was

The 2018 ACT/SAT concordance remains the only official one, and ACT states that “the current ACT-SAT concordance can continue to be used.”

Be clear about what that table actually compares. It was built on a retired four-section ACT and a pre-digital paper SAT. Both tests on both sides of that table have since changed format. The concordance was published with standard errors of plus or minus 2 ACT points and plus or minus 80 SAT points, and those bands were measured before either redesign.

Treat any ACT-to-SAT number as a range, not a point. Our ACT to SAT conversion and SAT to ACT conversion pages show the bands rather than hiding them.

Percentiles carry a validity window

ACT percentile tables are stamped with the period they describe. The current tables carry a validity window of September 2025 to August 2026. A percentile quoted without a window is a percentile you cannot date, and cohort composition shifts year to year.

When you see an ACT percentile anywhere, including here, check what period it covers before you use it to compare yourself to anyone.

What to actually do with this

Decide whether you are taking science, because that decision affects nothing about your Composite and everything about whether you have a STEM score to send. Check the requirements of the colleges on your list rather than defaulting either way.

Then stop reverse-engineering raw scores. The scored counts are lower than the administered counts, the tables are form specific, and the Composite rounds. Those three facts together mean your practice-test arithmetic has more slack in it than a single-point Composite target can absorb.

For the SAT side of the same problem, see our notes on methodology and data sources.