Juliana Ward
Staff Reporter

With the snow starting to melt and temperatures rising, the school year is moving onto spring testing including the MCA’s, ACT’s and AP exams. Students in all grades are prepping themselves for the future rounds of tests that we face with the upcoming season change.

According to the Principle Amy Steiner, 10th graders will be taking the reading portion of the MCA’s March 16th-18th. 11th graders will be taking the math portion of the MCA’s April 13th-15th. In middle school, the MCA’s are required to be taken every year. However, in high school, they are not required every year.

“The state testing like MCA’s, those are important because your school needs to measure how well they’re doing compared to other schools and to see if they’re teaching you right,” said junior Grace Garthwait.

The MCA’s are used to show how well your school is progressing compared to other schools in the state based on 3 tests. One test in reading, math, and science.

Just recently, the juniors have taken the ACT in school. The ACT is a test that is taken by your junior year and this test is used to show (most) colleges what you know on the three subjects: Reading, English, Math, Science along with an option to do a writing portion. For scoring on the ACT, in each section, you are given a scaled score which is through 36. Your scaled section scores are then compiled into your composite score which is also between 1 and 36.

According to the ACT Official Website, in the year of 2019, 52 percent out of 1.8 million students in the graduating class took the ACT. The ACT website provides everyone will multiple sources of research and results from students who have taken the ACT in previous years.

“Hearing about colleges that are like taking away ACT scores, I think that’s super cool because it allows you (colleges) to see more like the person rather than like a test score,” said junior Tillie Hogenson.

More recently colleges have been giving students the option to send their ACT scores or not. This allows colleges to look more at their transcript and see how they have done over their high school years.

“I can never concentrate on tests in general and the ACT was hard to sit through,” said senior Gabe Ketcham.

AP (advanced placement) exams come only a bit later in the season compared to the MCA’s, students who are in AP classes will take their tests May 4th through the 15th depending on the classes the student takes.

According to Niche School Rankings, the enrollment percentage for AP classes at Orono High School is 36 percent and the passing rate for exams is at 88 percent.

There is a fee for each AP exam taken, originally the initial fee would be $98 but lucky enough the state of Minnesota takes away $38 but along with the charges of having a test proctor and other important steps, the whole total for one AP exam costs $70.

“I feel like if you were to retake the exam, then it should cost the $70 but not the first time,” said sophomore Grace Pierpont.

AP exams are used to measure what you have learned over the course of the student’s AP class. They give you a high school credit as well as a college credit depending on the school. Also, AP classes are weighted classes.