ACT tutoring in New York City for the Enhanced ACT.

What changed on the ACT?

The Enhanced ACT rolled out for online testing in April 2025 and for every format in September 2025. It is the most significant structural change to the test in decades, and advice from anyone who took the ACT before that is partly obsolete.

• The core test is about two hours, down from roughly three: English, Math, and Reading, 131 questions in all, with shorter passages and more time per question.
• Science is optional. Students who take it get a separate 1 to 36 score that does not touch the composite. A few colleges only accept ACT scores that include Science, so the decision depends on the college list.
• The composite is the average of English, Math, and Reading, still on the 1 to 36 scale. Each section is now a full third of the score, so one weak section drags the composite down a lot.
• Paper or digital, same test. Which one a student takes matters less than practicing in the format they registered for.
• Most colleges superscore the ACT, combining the best section scores across sittings. The exceptions are not obscure. Georgetown, for one, does not superscore the ACT and wants the complete testing record.

The Enhanced ACT is shorter and less punishing on pacing. It is not, as some have suggested, now basically the SAT. The two tests are closer in length than ever and different on nearly everything else.

How we prepare students for the ACT

1. Diagnostic first. A full-length, timed ACT, ideally alongside an SAT diagnostic in sophomore spring, so the choice between tests rests on the student’s own numbers.
2. Section gaps, not the composite. A 28 composite could be three 28s, or a 33 in English, a 28 in Reading, and a 23 in Math. Those are not the same student and they do not need the same plan. If any section is three or more points below the highest, that is where the prep hours go.
3. A reading method that works under time pressure. ACT Reading is open-book. Kate’s approach skips the passage, starts with line-referenced questions, then keyword questions, and saves main-idea questions for last. The full walkthrough is in our step-by-step guide to ACT Reading.
4. The math and grammar schools skip. The ACT tests matrices, logarithms, vectors, and trigonometry that many NYC curricula never reach, plus punctuation rules like colons and dashes that no one teaches directly. We fill those gaps with our own guides.
5. A Science decision made on purpose. We look at the college list and the student’s diagnostic Science score before deciding whether to prep for the optional section at all.
6. Error analysis after every practice test. Wrong answers get sorted into content gap, careless mistake, timing, or misread. On My Answer Key administrations, we order a copy of the test and do the same with the questions the student missed.
7. The portal. Homework on a calendar, timed sections, and a skill map in the KFT portal. Parents get a written recap after every session.

When should a student start ACT prep?

The NYC timeline: diagnostics in the spring of sophomore year, a test chosen by early summer, the bulk of the prep over the summer, and testing in the fall of junior year. Fall ACT dates fall in September, October, and December, with additional dates in February, April, June, and July. A student who preps over the summer can be done by December of junior year.

Students who take the ACT cold and then prepare seriously typically improve three to five points. How long that takes depends on where the section gaps are. A student with one weak section may need a focused eight-week block. A student rebuilding math from the ground up needs a longer runway and more than one sitting.

Is an ACT retake worth it?

The score at the top of the report is the least useful number on it. When families ask whether to retake, we look at the section scores and the college list.

A retake probably makes sense if the student is below the middle 50% at target schools, if one section dragged the composite down, if the first test was a bad day, or if there was no real prep the first time.

It probably doesn’t if the student is already inside the middle 50% and the time is better spent on essays and activities, or if the score hasn’t moved after three or more attempts with real preparation. At that point the honest conversation is about a ceiling, and about whether a timed SAT practice test is worth an afternoon. Some students score meaningfully higher on the SAT because of format alone. We teach that too: see our SAT tutoring in NYC.

The retake question is really a superscoring question, and superscoring policy varies by school. Our superscoring guide covers sixty-three colleges that come up in KFT conversations.

Students we tutor for the ACT

• Students at NYC independent schools and specialized public high schools, in person across Manhattan and Brooklyn.
• Families outside the city, in the US and abroad, over video. Most of our practice already runs that way.
• Students who tried the SAT first and want to see whether the ACT’s pacing and question style suit them better.
• Student-athletes with recruiting deadlines that push testing earlier.
• Students with extended time or other accommodations. We can help guide the ACT accommodations process, and our founder holds a professional certificate in Learning Differences and Neurodiversity from the Landmark College Institute.

Where our students have been admitted, by year, is on our results page.