ACT Apporaching

Juniors across the Omaha Public Schools District are preparing to take the ACT, the American College Test. Students are required to take this college entrance exam on April 2nd. In order to facilitate a testing atmosphere, only third year high school students will be attending school on testing day.

The District emphasizes the importance of taking the ACT by highlighting the test’s ability to give personalized information about future college and career options, as the ACT is utilized by 4-year colleges and universities nationwide during the application process. The test should be taken seriously as it is completely free and provides an opportunity for students to secure their steps pursuing an education after high school.

The entire testing process will take around 4 hours, the district believes that by testing students in their high school that they are reducing test stressing, as the assessment is being taken in a familiar environment.

Last year, the ACT average in for the state of Nebraska is a 20.1, Central scoring the highest of the high schools in the Omaha Public School district with an average of a 19.1 which is shy just 1.9 points of the Nation’s ACT average of 21.

Omaha Public Schools Research Division has provided every student with access to a ACT prep online that can be accessed at http://onlineprep.act.org/ using students ops email as their username and student identification number as their password. Even after the April 2nd testing date as the district also encourages that the ACT should be taken more than once (students are allowed to retake the test up to 12), as more than half of test takers who retake the assessment see an improvement in their test score.

The ACT online prep allows students to create a learning plan, study for the exam using flashcards or an interactive game center, communicate with other classmates through discussion boards and take practice tests. With the data of the practice tests students can see monitor their average percentile, score on practice questions and score on each section. Using this tool students can get a prediction on what their score will be in each section of the assessment and get precision as to what their strengths and weaknesses are.

The ACT is administered 7 times each year during February, April, June, July, September, October, and December. If you are considering retaking the ACT it is important to note that ACT lets you select which score you would like to send to colleges and a number of colleges superscore the ACT, meaning assessments taken in multiple sittings will be combined, taking the highest score in each section creating a new, higher composition score.

Students do not have to bring anything for the test however cellphones or any other electronics are prohibited in testing centers and during breaks between each section. Getting a healthy amount (6-8 hours) of sleep and eating breakfast are encouraged the night and morning before the test.