Examine the ACT

Going into the Bootcamp//Stepping into the classroom,  the juniors need to start studying to get ready for the big day. Taking the ACT Bootcamp test will prepare students, but it will take 20 hours over three days. (Photo by Megan Meusy)

The ACT is a very boring test, but it is required to graduate, so every student has to take it. Many people even use it as a way to get into college. Therefore, they go to an ACT bootcamp to get better at the test. Since it is a hard standardized test for many people. The Bootcamp is a  long process and having it after school can make it very hard for students to comprehend all of the learning techniques. 

The ACT is one of the most important tests for juniors. The ACT  is set for February 24th, 2026, but luckily, there are boot camps across high schools to prepare Juniors for the brutal test. However, preparing for the test comes with determination and long hours. Out of the three days of bootcamp, two days are 9 hours and 30 minutes, and one day is 5 hours. There is a lot of information in a short period of time, and getting down all the techniques and skills to use for this test is important

“The ACT bootcamp was very long and time-consuming,” Beckam Rafie, 11, explained. “Especially when we had to be there for 9 hours on our weekends and even give up our whole weekend there. I was already brain dead because I had just done a week at school, and now I had to do 20 hours trying to study for a test to get me into college. It was hard, I was very tired, and it was a lot of information in one weekend.” 

Going into it, most people had an open mind about how beneficial this would be. However the long hours and being on the weekend took a toll on teenagers’ minds. It was not as helpful to some students as they already knew some of the techniques. Walking into the classroom the students were handed a test and had to take it right away. It was a very difficult test that required a lot of thought that not a lot of people were ready for on the first day..

“I understood all of what was taught up until the final couple hours of camp, where I mentally tapped out due to strenuous work and training. This why I say the days should have been much shorter,” Ruby Stowers, 11, said. “ I would honestly never do that camp again based on the fact that I already knew most of what was taught, and the days were painfully long. My least favorite things were probably the lack of breaks, uncomfortable seating, freezing temperatures, and the length of the camp per day.” 

It did not prove to be a fun and warming experience for many people. In order to process all of that information, you have to be comfortable in that environment. Since it did not feel that way, it made it harder to learn. You should also have many breaks since too much information at once can be very overwhelming and even scary to comprehend. As you are trying to comprehend one example, they have already moved on to the next. It may even need to be more hours, but in an extended amount of days instead of just three days.

“If I was one of the mentors, I would’ve allowed more student discussion and brain breaks,” Stowers said. “It was very overwhelming with all of the information she was trying to get us to know in such a fast amount of time.  How much we had to know, we only had a little amount to get taught it all. I would have rather had it broken up into smaller hours over more days, so we could fully comprehend the units. I would recommend it only to people who genuinely enjoy long lectures and test-taking.”

Considering the ACT is an important test for us as students, we need better practice to help us prepare. Because as we get closer to college, we need the scores to be perfect. This camp may not have helped us enough to get us to those scores. All in all, the long hours with so much information shoved into three days, the environment it was in, and lastly, the mental toll it took on us, definitely did not help us get ready for the test. It was very long weekend I would not recommend it.