Wednesday, August 1, 2001

College-bound high school students should register for ACT exam by Aug. 17

The next ACT Assessment will be administered Sept. 22.

College-bound high school students must register for the college admissions and placement exam by Aug. 17, the deadline for having your registration postmarked. There is a late registration postmark deadline of Aug. 31, but an extra fee is charged for late registrations.

ACT scores are accepted by virtually all U.S. colleges and universities, including all Ivy League schools. The ACT is not an aptitude test-it is an academic achievement test that measures students on what they learned in high school. Because it is curriculum-based, colleges use ACT scores for more than admissions decisions they use scores to place freshmen into classes that the students are academically prepared to handle.

For admissions decisions, colleges use ACT scores along with a student's high school grade point average, college prep courses taken, extracurricular activities and other information. The test fee is $24.

Students can register for the ACT by getting information from their high school counselors or online at ACT's Web site www.act.org. The Web site also has helpful interactive CD-Rom, ACTive Prep, which contains actual timed tests and helps students build study plans.

The ACT Assessment is given in all 50 states and is the number one college entrance exam taken by high school students in 25 states. There are four sections to the exam: English, reading, math and science reasoning. The ACT Assessment was taken more than 1.7 million times last year by college-bound students.

Students who take the exam more than once can report only their highest composite scores to prospective colleges if they choose. ACT Inc. is based in Iowa City, Iowa.