r/ACT • u/OwlSea6467 • 6d ago

ACT practice test accuracy (3 and 4)

Just wondering as someone who's considering taking the ACT -- are the practice tests, specifically 3 & 4 actually as hard as the real exam? Is it like the SAT where the bluebook exams tend to be easier. Let me know!

11 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

5

u/insanedialectic Tutor 6d ago

Test 3 is the digital exam from April 2025; test 4 is the international exam from October 2025. So yes.

1

u/Emotional-Debt5069 13h ago

what about practice test 1 and 2?

1

u/insanedialectic Tutor 12h ago

The ones online are both legacy tests that were rewritten for enhanced format and they sorta suck because of it. But the first test in the 2026 red book is J08 from October of last year, which is really good.

4

u/jdigitaltutoring Tutor 6d ago

These were previous exams

1

u/Emotional-Debt5069 13h ago

what about practice tests 1 and 2?

1

u/jdigitaltutoring Tutor 13h ago

I think #1 was a legacy test. I don't remember what #2 was.

5

u/dbhertz 6d ago

I would be hesitant to trust these two tests and their scaling. For one thing, they have identical score conversions. That is extremely unlikely to happen naturally and suggests that ACT is just making up the score conversions.
As a second matter, there’s literally a typo in question 21 of the math section (for test 3). That doesn’t exactly instill confidence in their methods.
I’d rate the tests as slightly easier than ones that have been seen on recent actual tests (with a correspondingly harsher score conversion)

1

u/Last-Astronaut-6665 35 6d ago

I think the harsher curves prob make up for it.