By MALLORY BUETOW

The Mirror reporter

The ACT is not the best representation of a student who is applying for college.

In 2016 a total of 2,090,342 students took the ACT. PrepScholar reports that the ACT is now the most popular college admissions standardized test in the United States of America.

The ACT first developed in 1959 because of the unhappiness with the SAT. English, reading, math and science are the four main components of the test. Writing was added as an optional part of the test in 2005.

Each year the number of high school students taking the test keeps rising. As numbers keep rising, scores keep dropping.

The ACT is supposed to show how ready and successful a student will be in college. Many surveys are actually proving this wrong.  

Many ACT scores did not correlate with how well a student did in college based on their grades and graduation rates shown in a recent study in an article on PBS.

Colleges usually look at a student’s ACT score, grade point average, community service, extracurricular activities, job experiences and academic achievements.

Most colleges have a range of where they would like an ACT or SAT score to be. I feel if a student doesn’t meet these requirements they won’t have a chance of getting into the school.

Colleges should base their decision more on grade point average, academic achievements and what types of extracurricular activities/ volunteer activities the student participates in rather than their ACT score.

The ACT is just one test the student takes in their high school career. This should not have as big of an impact on a student’s acceptance into a school.

I personally would rather have a well-rounded student than a student who can do very well on just one test.

Taking the ACT can be very stressful to some students which may cause them to do poorly on the test. Anything can affect the student’s performance the day they take the test including family issues, test anxiety, not getting a good night sleep and many more reasons.

Overall, I believe that the ACT should not have as big of an impact on a student’s acceptance in a college.

I understand that some students will have really good ACT scores and have great academic achievements which is awesome. But some students may have outstanding academic achievements and not be the best test taker and get a lower score on the ACT than they would have liked. This would lower their chances of getting into the college of their dreams.