PHILADELPHIA — Nearly 200 suburban Philadelphia high school students whose college entrance examinations were apparently lost in the mail are getting an opportunity to take them again.

A total of 182 Upper Darby High students will have a free ACT retest on Nov. 1 in Lansdowne.

An ACT spokesman says the company’s been looking for two weeks for the exams that were supposedly mailed on Sept. 15 by a testing coordinator.

The paper says the missing exams are causing headaches for students who hoped to use the results for early action college admissions that are due at the end of next week.

Two congressmen are writing to the U.S. Postal Service, asking for an investigation.

Parents whose children took the test continue to express anger that the company did not alert them to a problem earlier. Some students had hoped to send the scores along with early action college applications, which carry a Nov. 1 deadline.

"I am angry that I found out by reading your article," wrote Michelle Crowley, a social studies teacher at Friends' Central Middle School in Wynnewood, whose daughter was affected. "ACT has not bothered to contact any of these families."

Families began receiving letters from the testing company Thursday, apologizing and providing information on the retest.

The company also told families that students could forward the letter with their college applications so that schools would understand.

The company's efforts did little to comfort Mark Caplan, whose son, a student at Lower Merion High School, was affected.

"ACT's offer to refund the $54 and call it even is a joke," he said. "It's not about the money, which is all they are about. It's about kids who worked their tails off and deserve what they signed up for, a score they could send to the colleges of their choice."

Mr. Caplan said ACT should have a backup system in case exams get lost in the mail.

Also on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan, R-Upper Darby, announced that he has asked the postmaster general to investigate.

"As you know, standardized tests, such as the ACT, are a major aspect of the college application process and if the tests are not located soon, it will severely hamper that ability of many of these students to apply for colleges, particularly with some application deadlines as early as Nov. 1, 2014," wrote Mr. Meehan and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over the U.S. Postal Service.

First Published: October 24, 2014, 2:53 p.m.