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Hours before fall registration reopened, ACT announced two key changes to its registration process. In an attempt to address the problems that plagued its new registration portal last week, ACT developed a new queuing system and automatically registered some—but not all—seniors who were affected by recent test cancellations for upcoming administrations. Some students have been able to successfully register for fall test dates, while others continue to encounter problems.
A new queuing system
MyACT reopened on Monday, August 3rd. To manage the flow of website visitors and avoid the crashes that caused widespread issues last week, ACT placed students in line once the site hit a predetermined threshold of users—which happened minutes after registration opened. Many students immediately reported wait times of over an hour.
Here's what happens once you're in line:
- You'll be asked to stay on the page to keep your place in line.
- You'll hear a chime when it's your turn. The screen will change to show that you may enter.
- After the chime, you'll have 20 minutes to access the site. If you don't access the site within 20 minutes, you'll be moved to the back of the line.
The queuing system does not prioritize seniors, and ACT resorted to tweeting, "Juniors, be a buddy to your fellow seniors in need of scores for deadlines. Please consider registering later this week for a December or Spring date."
Update: website glitches continue to cause problems, kicking some students back into the queue before they can complete their registration.
Automatic registration for seniors
ACT automatically registered some class of 2020 and class of 2021 students whose tests have been canceled in recent months.
- Students automatically registered by ACT can log into MyACT and check their test center information.
- ACT claims to have selected the test center closest to where you live. Your test center should be within 300 miles of your home address. Note: this is a wide radius, meaning some students have been automatically registered for test centers located several hours and states away from where they live. At least one of our students has reported being auto-registered for a test site 376 miles away.
However, some seniors could not be automatically registered:
- If you requested a refund from April, June or July. In those cases, students' registration records were removed from ACT's system as part of the migration to MyACT.
- If there were no available seats within 300 miles of your home address.
- If there were technical issues with your account, such as duplicate email addresses for multiple accounts.
If you were not automatically registered for a fall exam, you can log into MyACT and register through the queuing system as described above.
ACT is still working to increase testing capacity for the fall, but in the meantime, it's a good idea to register for the closest possible test center on the soonest available date when you get into the registration portal.
Read the full details and FAQs here.
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