In-depth review of the December 2025 ACT

ACT has administered its new-format exam a few times now—enough for us to start seeing patterns and trends in each section. So what can students expect to see on their next ACT? We checked in with both digital and paper-based exam takers, and here are a few of the nitty-gritty details they shared.

Overall test experience

Students taking only the required English, Math, and Reading sections were placed in the same room with students who were also taking the optional Science and/or Essay section(s). This was true for both students taking the digital exam and those taking the paper-based exam, and some said it created general confusion and testing delays. The digital and paper testing experiences differed in other ways, though.

Paper-based test

We heard from some taking the paper-based exam that check-in was a little lengthy and that proctors were confused as to whether they should provide students with additional scratch paper (the answer is they shouldn't — on the paper-based exam, you're expected to use the test booklet to make notes and calculations) However, overall, proctors were helpful and worked to ensure everyone had pencils.

Digital test

Digital exam takers for the most part reported relatively seamless testing experiences, though in one instance, a slight glitch in the proctor’s app caused a delay of approximately 10 minutes in starting the Writing section. In each room, students started each section at the same time and took a break at the same time. Everyone received scratch paper to start and could ask for more at any time. In at least one case, testers were told that they could use their admission ticket for scratch paper, too.

ACT Gateway

ACT’s testing app, ACT Gateway, came in for criticism from test takers for its wordy instruction pop-ups and finicky tools. Here are some of the complaints we heard.

The highlighter tool is less than ideal. When you highlight portions of a passage while working on a question, the highlights disappear when you move on to the next question.
Selecting an answer choice doesn’t always work. Answer choices are presented as clickable radio buttons next to the letter and text of the answer choice. When you hover your mouse over the text or the surrounding white space, a box around the answer choice is greyed out. While it may seem reasonable to infer that you can click anywhere in this grey box to select your answer, there is a significant deadzone all around the border that won’t register clicks. You'll need to click carefully to make sure an answer choice is actually selected.
On Macs, scroll bars do not appear next to passages. This means that whenever a paragraph break happens to align with the bottom of the screen, there’s no visual cue to tell you that you need to scroll to see more of the passage or additional figures. Some test takers reported only realizing that they had not read a complete passage when they encountered questions about content they did not remember reading. Only students testing on Macs were affected — students using PCs did see scroll bars on the side of the screen.
When you reach the final question in a section, clicking “Next” prompts you to end the section early. After that final question, a pop-up appears in the middle of the screen with a big red button that says “Yes, end the test.” If you click on that button without thinking, you cannot move on to the next section early. Instead, you are required to wait on the test launch screen until all of the other test takers in the room have finished the section. Once you have clicked the button, you cannot change your mind and return to the section, so you lose the opportunity to review your work.

English

Test takers of both the digital and paper-based exams reported seeing typical content in the English section with only small variations. Here’s what we heard.

Students saw two five-question passages and four ten-question passages, though the order in which these passages appeared was not consistent.
Some test takers reported that, compared to the October exam’s English section, this English section felt slightly harder—but still within the expected norms of difficulty.
Content included some unusually tricky subject-verb agreement and verb form questions.
At least one test form included an argumentative passage—a new passage type for the ACT—but test takers reported that the new passage type did not affect their approach to the section.
Rhetoric and structure questions comprised a higher proportion of questions in the section than they did on the classic ACT, but that is in keeping with what we've been seeing on the new ACT.
Grammar questions also continue to make up a high proportion of questions in the section.

Math

According to student reports, the Math section has become more challenging since the rollout of the new ACT, regardless of whether students take the digital or the paper-based test. The December 2025 ACT Math section was no exception.

As is usual on the new ACT, questions did not necessarily appear in order of difficulty. Difficult questions appeared early in the section, while some questions toward the end were fairly easy. That's why we recommend prioritizing questions you feel you can solve easily and saving more difficult questions for later, so you can manage your pacing effectively.
More than one exam taker reported seeing questions that were repeats from the October 2025 ACT.
The section included a small number of wordy, conceptual questions that are more typical of SAT-style questions than classic ACT questions—another trend we're seeing on the new ACT.
Advanced concepts tested included exponential and linear regression, rates, inverse functions, normal distribution curves, intersections and unions of sets, the equation of an ellipse, vector addition, irrational numbers, imaginary numbers, and 3-D figures.
Questions on the volume of a cone and the law of cosines appeared, with no equations provided.

Digital ACT Math with Desmos

This digital ACT administration was the first national exam to include Desmos as a tool on the Math section. However, finding the calculator required effort, so some students may not even have noticed that they had access to the tool. To find Desmos on your Gateway app, find the option in the toolbar that says “Tools.” If you click on that, you’ll see a list of tools, in the middle of which you’ll see “Desmos Graphing Calculator.”

Those who did use the graphing calculator found it time-saving in comparison to hand-held graphing calculators such as the TI-84, but some who had also taken the SAT commented that the tool was less of a game-changer on the ACT due to the wide-ranging, trivia-style nature of the questions that appear on the exam.

Thus, while you're likely to find the new Desmos tool helpful, it may not be enough of an advantage to offset the other frustrations associated with the digital exam. We recommend taking the paper-based exam if you can!

Reading

According to students, the Reading section on this ACT was consistent with what we’ve been seeing on the new exam, with no major curveballs. There were just a few noteworthy details.

On more than one test form, two of the section’s four passages were Literary Narratives, which breaks with the usual pattern of one Literary Narrative + three Informational passages.
In one test form, students saw three passages that were written in first-person, which some may have found challenging.
Dual passages were Informational passages for the exam takers we heard from.
None of the test takers reported seeing any graphs in the Reading section. (In the other test dates this fall, graphs showed up in unscored, experimental passages.)
The section contained typical ACT Reading questions — no one reported any unusual question types.

Science

What did students think of the now-optional Science section on this test? It was fairly standard, from what we heard.

As usual, the section tested students’ ability to read graphs and interpret data and trends.
Conflicting Viewpoints passages continue to be a mainstay of the exam, and they appeared once per section on the forms our students received. This means that ACT’s recently-released Free Practice Test 2 is still the only test—in the current or classic format—to include two passages of this type.
Just like the classic ACT, the new ACT continues to include outside knowledge questions. Test takers reported that on this exam they were required to know that mercury is an element, that acid has a pH below seven, the difference between condensation and evaporation, what an experimental control is, which elements are noble gases, whether a sodium ion has a negative or positive charge, the electrical charges (positive or negative) associated with different subatomic particles, and which letters are used to represent different elements in a chemical compound. One especially challenging question even asked students to identify the closest common ancestor of a sand shrimp. These questions appeared on various test forms, however, and not all on the same form.

Writing

Only a small percentage of ACT exam takers tend to sign up for the Writing section, since it's optional and rarely required by schools. As a result, we received limited feedback on the section. We did discover a few things of note regarding the digital Writing section experience, though.

Initially, the section provides you with the prompt, three perspectives on a particular issue, and the tips and directions for how to preplan your response to the perspectives. When you click “Next,” the tips and directions are hidden, and in their place, you will see a box where you can type your response.
When typing your response, you can undo and redo using hotkeys, but you cannot copy, cut, or paste.
As you type, a percentage ticks down from 100% to indicate how much space you have left for your response, which some students may find stressful. However, there is significant space allotted for the response, so it’s quite unlikely that you’ll exceed the character limit.

What does this mean for you?

The new ACT remains consistent in which concepts it tests and how it tests them—good news if you’re planning to take the ACT soon! While improvements to the digital ACT, such as the addition of Desmos, are encouraging, we recommend taking the paper-based exam if you can. The fact that the paper exam offers students the ability to mark up material right in the test booklet, skip difficult passages easily, and avoid glitches in the testing app makes it a clear winner in our book!

Need more individualized advice?

The recommendations above are general suggestions. If you have specific questions, reach out to our experts here. We’re happy to help in any way we can.

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