The ACT Prep Class at Benilde-St. Margaret’s has gone through many changes in the past five years. Starting in the fall of 2019, BSM began requiring students to take an ACT preparatory class through a test prep company called Breakaway. This class was an in-person prep course within the BSM building. When COVID-19 hit, BSM had to switch to online classes, including the ACT-prep course. With some colleges becoming test optional, fewer students engaged with the prep courses. This year BSM decided not to require the prep course during the school day however, students have the option to take the course.
One of the biggest factors for removing this course as a required part of the BSM student day was student engagement. Even with the first go at prep courses (2019), teachers noticed that some students were not engaged. When later they moved to doing prep online, BSM still required the prep course, but they no longer offered it in an in-person setting. BSM counselors noticed with less regulation and not a specific teacher supervising, there was even less engagement, and this led to making the course optional. Even though the decision was made to make the course optional, the counseling department still saw the ACT prep course as a waste of money. “I mean it was just so expensive for the very few students and even the students who signed up and opted in, some of them wouldn’t even show up” BSM Counselor Kate Berry said.
This year, BSM decided to take the prep course out of the school day entirely. There are still options through the school to take prep courses, some of them even being free through a student resource website called Naviance. The course is now not available during the school day at all and is only available to do on students’ own time. Although with fewer and fewer schools looking at or even accepting ACT scores, this model of having prep being optional is what BSM thinks will work best for the foreseeable future. “With what is out there and what is available to us, I don’t see us going back to required prep,” Berry said.
With what is out there and what is available to us, I don’t see us going back to required prep.”
— Kate Berry
Overall students and staff seem to agree that optional prep is the way to go. Some students are not even taking the ACT test at all. When going through the college research process students find that many of the specific colleges they want to attend don’t take test scores. This leads to students not even wanting to participate if it was required, “We’ve had more students in the past two years just not test than we ever have before,” Berry said.