News May 2025

22 Jul

Written By Elizabeth McLaughlin

The USA

Harvard Considers International Admits and Other Applications

Source: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/28/harvard-loosens-commitment-intl

New ACT Digital Findings

Source: https://blog.arborbridge.com/first-new-digital-act

“Math was by far the section that students found most atypical. Here’s what they experienced:

Students reported that the math section on this test felt significantly harder than typical ACT math sections on paper exams.
Questions did not follow the usual progression of easy-medium-hard throughout the section: very difficult questions appeared as early as question 10 and one or two easy questions appeared after question 40.
Unfortunately, some students were unaware that the built-in calculator on the digital ACT is not a Desmos calculator and therefore had not brought their own graphing calculators. They found the online calculator provided somewhat clunky. Students: don’t forget to bring your own calculator!
The test included more than the usual number of questions dealing with advanced concepts such as probability, trig, complex numbers, inverse functions, linear regression, vectors, expected value, logarithms, and geometric sequences. While all of these topics have appeared on past papers, most of them have tended to appear only once per test (or not at all).
While students had more time per question on this exam than on the classic paper exam, most still reported having timing issues because there were very few easy questions and a large proportion of difficult questions.
Many students remarked that the questions had unusual setups or unconventional and confusing phrasing. Students did not report seeing any multi-question setups.
A very small number of test takers reported that math seemed easier than usual, which may be due to the different versions of the test that were used.”