If you took the ACT in the last twenty years, you remember the ritual: No. 2 pencils, a ticking clock, a bubble sheet that felt like a life sentence. What you probably didn’t know is that the test itself has been quietly changing—and the changes are accelerating in ways that should make every parent and student pay attention.
The ACT was born in 1959 in Iowa City as a competitor to the SAT, founded by University of Iowa professor Everett Lindquist. For decades it sold itself as the “curriculum-based” alternative—testing what you learned in school rather than raw aptitude. That distinction mattered. It’s also the first clue to what’s really going on.
Here’s what most people miss. While everyone was watching the SAT get sued, scandalized, and eventually go digital and “adaptive,” the ACT was making its own moves. In 2020, it rolled out superscoring and section retesting. In 2025, it went further: the ACT is now shorter, faster, and—in a striking shift—students can choose to take the science section or skip it. That’s not a small tweak. That’s a philosophical retreat.
Why does it matter? Because colleges have been quietly abandoning test requirements for years. The pandemic gave them cover, but the real driver was a slow-burn legitimacy crisis: the tests correlate with family income almost as strongly as they correlate with college performance. In 2020, the University of California system dropped the SAT and ACT entirely. Others followed. The ACT’s response was to make itself harder to ignore—and easier to fit into a busy student’s schedule.
But there’s a deeper game. The ACT is a business. Its revenue depends on volume, and volume depends on colleges requiring it. When colleges go “test-optional” permanently, the testing companies need a new pitch. So they rebrand: shorter, friendlier, more flexible. They’re not just competing with the SAT anymore—they’re competing with the idea that standardized tests are necessary at all.
Now connect the dots. The same year the ACT went digital and modular, a wave of states expanded their own standardized testing contracts. Florida, Alabama, and others have long used the ACT as their statewide high school assessment. Those contracts are worth tens of millions. If the ACT becomes the default state test, it doesn’t matter if elite colleges drop it—the money keeps flowing from taxpayers, not admissions offices.
And follow the influence trail. The ACT’s board has included university presidents, but also executives from testing-adjacent companies—test prep, data analytics, textbook publishers. This isn’t a conspiracy in a basement. It’s the normal revolving door of American education policy, where the people who design the tests also profit from the anxiety they create.
What does this mean for you? If you’re a student, the “optional” science section is a trap and a gift. Skip it if your target schools don’t care—but know that some scholarship programs still use the composite score, and a missing science section changes your composite. If you’re a parent, the real question isn’t “Is the ACT easier now?” It’s “Who benefits from me believing that?”
The ACT isn’t evil. It’s a tool. But tools are designed by people with interests. The quiet revolution isn’t about fairness. It’s about survival—of an institution that has watched its cultural authority slip and is now remaking itself in the image of the market. Stay woke to that.
**Closing opinion:** The ACT’s makeover is less about helping students and more about keeping a legacy industry alive. Until we demand transparency on who profits from the testing pipeline, every “reform” is just a new coat of paint on the same old machine.