ACT test delay roils students’ college plans

Karine Chan, who soon will start her senior year at Mills High School in Millbrae, battled anxiety about the college admissions cycle even before the coronavirus struck, complicating an already stressful process.

She planned to take the ACT in April, only to see the pandemic force the test’s cancellation. Karine rescheduled for Saturday and diligently resumed preparations — more than 15 hours of practice, plus 12 hours on mock tests. She looked forward to finally getting her chance to take a test required by most colleges, which put heavy weight on the scores in making admissions decisions. The stakes are high, the pressure intense.

Then, last week, she received a deflating email : canceled again.

Her experience illustrates another sizable

challenge for Bay Area high school students as they navigate a turbulent year. They all finished the spring semester with remote instruction, and most will begin the fall the same way, while also dealing with rampant disruption to a key piece of the college application process.

This tumult caused by the virus unfolded at a time when the role of standardized testing in college admissions has stirred heated debate in higher education. Many colleges throughout the U.S. temporarily adopted testoptional policies after the pandemic ravaged the customary spring testing season.

Students such as Karine still consider it an important tool in applying to schools. She understood why ACT officials canceled Saturday’s scheduled test at Skyline High in Oakland, given virusfueled safety fears.

But she remains discouraged by the “lack of direction” in the email, which offered few details on when the test would happen. ACT and SAT tests must be completed before the college application deadline, generally in December or January.

“I’m really frustrated,” Karine said. “This was already a rescheduled date, so I expected to go in and get the test done. Now it kind of just sucks, because we’re left in the dark. We don’t really know when we’re going to be able to take the test, or if we can. And college admissions start soon, so it’s kind of scary.”

Karine, who hopes to attend Sacramento State or UC Davis, is hardly alone. ACT (which stands for American College Testing) canceled hundreds of test locations across the country for Saturday, including more than 40 in California. Bay Area locations affected, beyond Skyline, include San Jose State, Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep in San Francisco and Cal State East Bay in Hayward.

The Scholastic Aptitude Test, the other major college entrance exam, suspended testing for most of the summer. Officials with the College Board, which runs the SAT, hope to restart Aug. 29 and hold monthly tests through the end of the year.

This week’s struggles for ACT came after a wave of cancellations in June, including several one day before the scheduled test. The nonprofit organization held tests at 1,300 sites nationwide for fewer than 50,000 students — only 20% of those who wanted to be tested, according to Janet Godwin, ACT’s interim chief executive officer.

These issues were the latest to bedevil high school students, many of whom encountered technical glitches when they tried to take online Advanced Placement exams (administered by the College Board) this spring. Standardized testing also came under renewed scrutiny in May, after the University of California Board of Regents voted to drop the SAT and ACT testing requirement because of concerns the tests discriminate against minority and lowincome students.

Godwin, in a recent phone interview with The Chronicle, pointed to rising demand for summer testing after the pandemic wiped out typical spring dates. She acknowledged ACT could not open enough test locations last month, mostly because of virussparked restrictions imposed by local governments and school districts.

Some sites didn’t have access to supplies such as hand sanitizer, she said, and social-distancing guidelines trimmed ACT’s capacity in half.

“One takeaway is students are really anxious to get into their college planning,” Godwin said. “That’s the good news, but we’re struggling to find the capacity.”

She insisted ACT learned how to administer tests in safe, sanitary environments, but this week’s flood of cancellations showed sizable obstacles remain. Godwin knows the flurry of lastminute June cancellations didn’t reflect well on her organization and its ongoing communication problems.

“We had some test coordinators who weren’t quite clear on the guidelines,” she said. “At the last minute, some people said, ‘We can’t do this.’ Our final call was if they’re not confident they cannot deliver tests in a safe way, then cancel. ... I totally understand how frustrating and stressful it has been for students.”

Maxwell Weaver, a rising senior at Campolindo High in Moraga, took the SAT in September 2019, at the start of his junior year. He did that mostly to get a baseline score, and then he dived into serious preparations in November — weekly sessions with a tutor, mock tests, about 40 hours of work in all.

But on March 13 — one day after Weaver and his Campo basketball teammates learned that night’s state championship game was canceled, and one day before he was scheduled to take the SAT again — he found out the test was canceled.

“It was kind of heartwrenching,” he said.

Weaver signed up to retake the SAT in September, but he’s skeptical it will actually happen. These unprecedented fourplus months have taught him and his peers the importance of adapting.

“So much is out of your control,” Weaver said. “The blueprint you’ve been told about over and over as a high school student has kind of been thrown away. You have to be flexible.”

This year’s turbulence included UC’s landmark decision, which raised the stakes even more. UC went to a testoptional policy in 2021 and 2022, followed by “testblind” in 2023 and 2024. In 2025, the university will replace the tests with a new, UCspecific admissions test or eliminate the longtime testing requirements altogether.

Godwin maintained the combination of test scores and high school grades offers the best prediction of college success — especially now, after many schools went to passfail grading in the wake of the pandemic pushing classes online.

ACT consequently added more testing dates — now three in September and four in October. Students in the Bay Area, and around the country, can only hope these dates actually stick.

“It was kind of heartwrenching . ... So much is out of your control . ... You have to be flexible.”

Maxwell Weaver, a rising senior at Campolindo High in Moraga