To be eligible for graduation, all students, free of charge, must participate in Nevada’s College and Career Readiness (CCR) assessment during their junior year of high school on the day selected for testing. The State Board of Education chose the ACT as Nevada’s CCR assessment. A student’s ACT score will not be used to determine graduation eligibility, but can be submitted with college applications. The ACT is a nationally recognized college admissions exam that is accepted by all four-year colleges and universities in the United States.

The Nevada Board of Regents recently adopted a policy guaranteeing that students who take the ACT or SAT in high school and meet specified college-ready benchmarks will be placed directly into college-level math and English courses and are exempt from being placed into remediation. The policy utilizes the college-ready benchmarks established by ACT and SAT based on national data:

ACT

English - Minimum Score of 18 Mathematics - Minimum Score of 22

SAT

Critical Reading - Minimum Score of 500 Mathematics - Minimum Score of 500

To take advantage of this guarantee, Nevada students only need to enroll in math and English courses in their senior year of high school and then enroll in an institution within the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) within one year of graduation from high school.

All NSHE Institutions are participating in the ACT/SAT Guarantee:

• University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)
• University of Nevada, Reno (UNR)
• Nevada State College (NSC)
• College of Southern Nevada (CSN)
• Great Basin College (GBC)
• Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC)
• Western Nevada College (WNC)

• The ACT is accepted by all four-year colleges and universities in the United States.
• The ACT is not an aptitude or an IQ test. Instead, the questions on The ACT are directly related to what students have learned in high school courses.
• The ACT is administered in all 50 of the United States and in many other countries.
• Nevada juniors will take the ACT Plus Writing, which consists of a 40-minute writing test and 215 multiple-choice questions in four subject areas: English, mathematics, reading and science. The test will be administered at the student's school during a regular school day in either the end of February or early March. Students who miss the first ACT test date must take the make-up test on a test date that has been selected for that school year.