Case Study: ACT delivers thousands of customized college-readiness reports faster with SAS 9.4

ACT shines light on college readiness

ACT is a nonprofit best known for the ACT college entrance exam; its Education and Workforce Research Services (EWRS) group must process more than 2 million test records a year to produce accurate summary reporting at school, district, state, regional and national levels without double-counting students. The scale and complexity — selecting graduating cohorts, edit checking, analyzing multi-source data and delivering thousands of customized reports on tight timelines — created a high-volume, time-sensitive data challenge.

By standardizing on SAS 9.4 for file handling, data manipulation and large-scale analysis, EWRS reduced processing time dramatically (tasks that once took 10+ hours now take a few) and completes the full year-end workflow in four to six weeks. The team produces thousands of reports annually (including 2,000+ High School to College Success reports and 300–500 custom reports), supports predictive validity and course-placement studies, and can respond quickly to customer requests.

ACT

Robert Ziomek

Director, EWRS Research and Development Division