ACT Online

In my previous post I mentioned the possibility that the SAT and ACT might one day be administered to students in the comfort of their own homes.  I cited as evidence the fact that GMAC and ETS, producers of the GMAT and GRE, had done research on that possibility for the GMAT and GRE.   Well here we are one week later and guess what? The GRE is now being offered online and the GMAT is slated to become available for online, in-home testing in a few weeks!  

The fact that this reality is already upon us is just mind-blowing.  It truly is a brave new world out there!  What does this mean for the SAT and ACT?  I predict that it is only a matter of time before the SAT and ACT are offered in-home.  It may take a while.  Possibly many years.   But it is going to happen.  

Presumably the SAT and ACT will go fully computer-based first.  The GMAT and GRE made that transition decades ago and clearly the ACT is already moving in that direction.  College Board will follow suit with the SAT.

There will be some logistical issues with offering online testing for the SAT and ACT since the scale of the endeavor is so much larger and since you have thousands upon thousands of kids who don’t have home computers and who would be disadvantaged in a world in which wealthier kids get to take the SAT and ACT at home.  But that will change and a solution will emerge.   I write this in part because as of 3 days ago I thought that the obstacles to online testing for the GMAT and GRE would be so formidable as to prevent it from becoming a reality until the distant future.  And yet, literally one week after mentioning it (more as a sort of dream scenario) in my previous post, it has become a reality. 

The age of in-home, online testing is upon us.  It may not happen tomorrow or next week or next year, but the march of progress will lead us ineluctably to the day when the SAT and ACT can be taken at home!