Delaware County

ACT Tests Missing for 182 Students Due to Mailing Mistake

For high school students across the country, the college application process is stressful enough as it is. Yet nearly 200 local students have even more to worry about after tests critical to their applications suddenly vanished.

On September 13, 182 high school students took the ACT test at Upper Darby High School. Over a month later, those students are still waiting for their results. An ACT spokesperson told NBC10 a testing coordinator didn’t follow procedure when mailing the tests out. According to the spokesman, the coordinator sent the tests through the U.S. Postal Service instead of FedEx, as he or she should have done. As a result, the tests are missing.

Rose Gendelman, senior and student council president at Friends' Central School, spent five months preparing for the test.  Without her ACT score, Gendelman feels her chances of getting into the college of her choice for early admission are now in jeopardy.

“It’s just really, really frustrating,” Rose said. “Why did this have to happen?

Her parents are upset as well.

“On top of, you know, the teenage stress and all the drama, it’s a hard couple months and on top of this now, I don’t know what to say,” said Rose’s mother, Christine McGinley..

Rose’s parents told NBC10 they still haven't heard from the ACT organization about what happened to the tests.

“It’s a reputable organization that’s supposed to adhere to a certain code of conduct and they didn’t do it,” said Rose’s father Rich Gendelman.

The affected students will have the chance to retake the test at no cost, according to ACT spokesman Ed Colby. The organization expects to notify students with the details by the end of the week. The company will also provide a letter for students to submit with their college applications to explain why their test scores are incomplete.

As for the location of the missing tests, the ACT continues to investigate. Colby said Upper Darby school district administrators have been to the post office several times to look for the missing tests.

"This is very unfortunate, and very rare," Colby said.

The ACT organization is hopeful, Colby said, that the tests will eventually show up.

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