The History of the ACT

University-Level Standardized Testing Before the ACT

Widespread university attendance is a relatively recent phenomenon, and postsecondary education was historically the privilege of a very small segment of the American population. During the 19th century, students typically gained acceptance to universities by passing their preferred institutions' own admission tests and/or graduating from high schools that were certified by those institutions. Around 1900, a group of college presidents developed a standardized test that became known as the "College Boards." Combined with research on intelligence testing conducted by the U.S. Army over the next 25 years, the College Boards would evolve into the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which students first took in 1926. The SAT, as this test would come to be known, gained widespread acceptance over the next 30 years.

E.F. Lindquist and the Creation of the ACT

The key figure in the initial development of the ACT was Everett Franklin Lindquist (1901-1978), who was a Professor of Education at the University of Iowa. Lindquist had been working on standardized testing since the 1920s, and one problem he saw with the SAT was the fact that this assessment purported to evaluate theoretical reasoning skills as opposed to practical knowledge. He set out to develop an examination that would emphasize the latter, which he saw as more useful for university studies. The ACT was the result of a team effort led by Lindquist and University of Iowa Registrar Ted McCarrel, and the test was first administered to about 75,000 students in 1959. The notion of testing for academic achievement rather than innate intelligence has been the guiding philosophy of the ACT for its entire existence.

Structure of the Original ACT and Early Expansion

The first ACT was a four-part exam, with 45-minute sections on English, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Natural Sciences. The original ACT used the 36-point scoring scale that is still in place today. The ACT quickly became a viable competitor to the SAT. One reason for this was a relatively simple matter of geography. The SAT was created and used by highly selective universities in the Northeastern United States, while the ACT's Midwestern roots helped establish the test in that part of the country (these regional preferences have been remarkably persistent, with the SAT currently more popular on the coasts and the ACT the favored choice in middle America). The ACT also came to be seen as a credible alternative to the SAT by a sizable number of educators at many different types of postsecondary institutions.

Further ACT Development

The ACT was revised significantly in the 1980s, and the new version of the test was first administered to students in 1989. This so-called "enhanced ACT" featured a Science Reasoning section and a Reading section, which respectively replaced the Natural Sciences and Social Studies sections on the old test. Competition with the SAT has been cited as a major reason for these changes, and there is little question that this competition has benefited both assessments. ACT added an optional Writing section in 2005, clearly a response to the SAT's essay. For much of the 2010s the ACT drew more test-takers than the SAT, and the two have swapped the lead since; roughly 1.4 million students in a recent U.S. graduating class took the ACT. (ACT also cites more than two million test-takers a year, but that larger figure counts every registration rather than unique graduates.) The exam is accepted by nearly all U.S. four-year colleges that require or consider admission tests, though policies vary and are worth checking school by school. Online, computer-based testing is now offered in the United States and abroad. The most sweeping recent change came with the 2025 redesign, which made Science and Writing optional and rebuilt the Composite around English, Math, and Reading alone.

The ACT Organization

The organization behind the exam was founded in 1959 by Lindquist and McCarrel and is headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa. For most of its history it operated as a nonprofit; in 2024 it reorganized as a for-profit public-benefit corporation, ACT Education Corp., and in 2026 entered into an agreement with ETS. Beyond the test itself, ACT runs a range of education programs across the primary, secondary, and postsecondary levels and publishes research on college and career readiness. Some offerings target younger students—ACT Aspire, for instance, is pitched as a way to gauge how students in grades 3-10 might later perform on the ACT. The organization also weighs in on education policy through position papers on schooling and workforce development.