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Counseling and Guidance » College Admissions Testing

College Admissions Testing

HHS CEEB Code: 310530

The ACT  is designed to test concepts learned in school rather than analytical skills. It comprises four required sections: English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science. The Writing portion of the ACT is optional, though some colleges and universities may require it as part of their application for admission.  It is scored on a scale of 1–36. Your composite score is the average of your scores in the four main sections rounded to the nearest whole number.

Students can take the exam six times throughout the year, with national testing dates in September, October, December, February, April, and June.  Hightstown High School is an ACT Testing center.  The total testing period, including breaks, lasts about five hours with Writing or about four hours and 15 minutes without.

The HHS school counselors recommend that those planning to take the ACT do so in the spring of students’ junior year or fall of senior year.  

The SAT  evaluates students’ readiness for college level work. A new version of the test was rolled out in March 2016. Some of the updates involved adding questions more closely related to high school course work, more “real world” vocabulary and math, no penalties for wrong answers, and a return to an optional Writing section. Scoring is also back to the 1600-point scale. The SAT Reasoning Test is made up of four parts - Reading, Writing and Language, Math, and the optional essay.

The test lasts three hours and 50 minutes with the essay and three hours without it.  Hightstown High School is a national testing center for four administrations each year in October, November, March and May.  

The HHS school counselors recommend that all juniors take the PSAT in October of the junior year and the SAT Reasoning Test in March or May of the same year.  SAT Subject tests can be taken in June of the junior year if applicable.

SAT/ACT Concordance Table

A concordance table can be found at the link below and is an attempt to provide families with a tool to evaluate and find comparable scores on both assessments.