Eight percent of New Jersey’s 2006 high school graduates took the ACT college entrance exam at some point in their high school career, the Iowa-based testing company recently reported.

While the SAT exam still outranks the ACT test by a 10-to-1 margin among teens in the Garden State, 7,823 high school grads took the ACT, marking a 33 percent increase over last year, and a whopping 97 percent hike from 2002.

It is not unusual for many students take the SAT and the ACT to increase their chances of getting better scores and gaining entry into more prestigious colleges and universities.

The ACT exam is measured by a score of 1 and 36.

New Jersey’s test takers scored an average of 21.8 percent – also up from last year, and slightly higher than the national average of 21.3 percent.

Although the state’s high school graduates are out performing many of their peers in the nation with their test scores, the ACT results suggest that many are “lacking at least some of the skills they will need to do well in college coursework, particularly in the area of science.”

The 27 percent of New Jersey students who met or exceeded the company’s College Readiness Benchmark score in science, compared equally to the national average.