ACT practice test: ACT prep and ACT practice questions on the enhanced format

ACT rolled the enhanced test out in stages, which is exactly why so much prep material is wrong. It reached national online testing in April 2025, then all national administrations including paper in September 2025, and state and district school-day testing in spring 2026. Composite scores from tests taken before September 2025 do not change. If you are testing now, you are taking the enhanced ACT, and any practice test built on the legacy format is training you for the wrong clock.

• Science became optional, and the Composite is now English, math and reading
• Math answer choices went from five to four, raising a blind guess from 20% to 25%
• Total testing time fell from 175 minutes to 125 without Science, or 165 with it
• Embedded field-test items replaced the old stand-alone experimental section

There is a real trap in the published question counts. ACT advertises 50 English, 45 math, 36 reading and 40 science questions, but those totals include unscored field-test items mixed invisibly into your test. The scored counts are lower. Both numbers are true, and knowing the difference tells you the pace you actually need to hold, because you cannot identify which items are unscored while you are sitting there.

• English: 40 scored items (50 total) in 35 minutes, about 42 seconds each
• Math: 41 scored items (45 total) in 50 minutes, about 67 seconds each
• Reading: 27 scored items (36 total) in 40 minutes, about 67 seconds each
• Science, optional: 34 scored items (40 total) in 40 minutes
• Writing, optional: one essay in 40 minutes, scored 2 to 12, unchanged

Usually yes, and the reason is asymmetry. Science costs you 40 extra minutes and a small fee, and it produces a separate 1 to 36 score plus a STEM score when paired with math. It cannot lower your Composite, because the Composite no longer includes it. What it can do is satisfy a college that still wants it, or an engineering program that reads the STEM score. Skipping it is a decision you cannot undo without retaking the whole test, since ACT has never launched section retesting.

• Science cannot drag your Composite down: the Composite is English, math and reading
• Take it if any school on your list asks for it, or if you are applying to STEM programs
• Some colleges still compute their own totals that include Science
• You cannot add Science later without sitting the entire test again

A practice test is a diagnostic, not a workout. Taking six of them and reviewing none is the most common way students plateau at a 22. The score comes from the review: for every question you missed, write down what the question was actually testing and which wrong answer attracted you. The ACT recycles a small number of trap patterns, and once you can name the trap, you stop falling for it. Timed sections between full tests do more for a score than another full test does.

Full-length tests are expensive in time. Once you know your weak section, drill it directly: nothing but comma splices, or nothing but data representation, until the pattern is automatic. English rewards concision more than any other section, and math rewards substituting your answer back into the problem. Mixed random practice feels productive and hides the specific weakness you need to find.

• English: punctuation, agreement, concision and rhetorical skills
• Math: algebra, functions, geometry, statistics and probability, now four choices
• Reading: main idea, inference and paired passages under a 40 minute clock
• Science: data representation, research summaries and conflicting viewpoints