I went to a National Test Prep Association conference in Philly in June, 2024.
Everyone there is really smart, and used to being around people who aren't as smart. So, when they get together in one big hotel gallery room under fluorescent lights to talk about testing data and the differences between various practice test form codes, things get rowdy.
Drinks started at 5. Shots at 8. My buddy Kate rented a Karaoke bar at 10. The entire bar. And there we were: singing Journey with an ACT rep, who, hours before, promised the entire room the ACT wouldn't change.
That was June 2024. ACT was bought by Nexus Capital Management in April 2024. ACT bro was fired by July. ACT announced they were changing the entire test by September 2025.
January 2024. I was at a school on the East Coast that since fired us for a variety of solid reasons. This speech, however, wasn't one of those reasons. In this speech, I described the ACT as a Toyota Land Cruiser: reliable, unchanged from year to year, the ride or die test. Every part of that test was carefully accounted for: fonts designed to be blah and intimidating: enough to knock out some percent of students year over year and maintain the curve. Two "thou shalt not cheat" signatures required. Science at the end of the test instead of the beginning. Math at #40 onward getting rowdier than ACT fiends at a karaoke bar at 1 am. You knew what you were going to get, you knew the stakes, you knew the curves wouldn't change significantly.
Meanwhile, the SAT was breaking shit for market share, like Tesla. Back then, I was like don't take the SAT if you don't have to. They have a history of changing things, using high school kids as guinea pigs in their broader education monopolizing schemes.
And now, introduce Nexus Capital Management. I'm not sure what the association was, but they were like "Oh wow SAT is shorter, we should be shorter too! Let's cut costs, build interest by cutting the test in half and making the most annoying section optional."
So now, we have two companies:
ACT, which used to build Land Cruisers, now building copycat spaceships for market share.
SAT, who is accustomed to breaking shit and starting over, building the OG spaceship for market share. And it has a multi-year head start in building spaceships.
If you haven't guessed, this is why we only teach the SAT at HQ right now (although we'll still teach it online, 1-1). ACT, used to doing things the exact same way year after year, now has overlords who culturally trim fat, create half-assed products, then will likely sell to the highest bidder once they hit their target EBIDTA.
SAT, at least, is indeed like Tesla: the "nonprofit" itself owns the entire stack.
However, they're both still cars. So in the end, buy what you want.