Whether or not you are admitted to a college program and whether or not you receive scholarship money depends on several factors. In addition to focusing on getting the best ACT score possible, you should also work on obtaining the best GPA possible, writing a spectacular personal statement, taking a challenging course load, and rounding out your application with extra-curriculars. Best ACT Scores. ACT Superscore. Need Help? Outside the U. This helps us come up with a solid test prep plan, but these are by no means hard and fast rules.
On the Math and Science side, once a student has taken Algebra 2, I would expect the scores to come out as follows Some students outpace these estimates even without prep. Others come in well under the mark on their first testing efforts. If you are disheartened by your ACT scores so far, I can tell you that under-performing on the ACT as compared to your academic progress is very common.
About 4 hours of prep is often all it takes to nudge those previously lackluster ACT scores toward much stronger, more accurately representative numbers. You can use tools like BigFuture. I highly recommend creating a spreadsheet to keep track of the data. In order to be considered a strong applicant in the following year, you'll want to target the upper half of this range.
If your ACT scores fall in this upper half or above, you can breathe easy and continue to hone the other aspects of your application to make yourself an even more competitive applicant. If your scores aren't quite within that range yet, you'll want to come up with a game plan to prepare for your next ACT so you can get into that score range. You may be tempted to skip this question if you feel you aren't the kind of student who will qualify for scholarships.
That would be a serious mistake - one that can cost you thousands of dollars in free tuit ion dollars down the line. The time to research paying for college is the same time that you are selecting the colleges you're going to apply to because, if you know where to look, you can find colleges that will pay you to attend, even with 50th or 60th percentile ACT scores.
You don't have to be a 99th percentile scoring, 4. You just have to know where to look to find the money. So, at the same time that you are researching admissions averages, you should also look into the score requirements for merit aid which is sometimes referred to as academic scholarships on college websites. While getting in to a college is important, many families overlook the financial aid impact of their ACT scores. One ACT point can make the difference between earning nothing and having thousands of dollars in free tuition money in your pocket.
Without doing scholarship research early, you run the risk of walking away from testing when you are incredibly close to earning seriously impactful tuition awards. There are two types of scores that fall in this range: your section scores and your composite score. The ACT exam comprises four sections:. The score on each section is calculated by converting the raw score —the number of questions you answered correctly in a given section—to a scaled score in that range.
There are no penalties for questions with an incorrect answer. We actually have this handy dandy score calculator where you can plug in your raw scores to figure out your section scores. You can also check out our ACT Raw Score Conversation Chart for a sense of how many questions you need to answer correctly to get a certain scaled score. To make your composite , or overall, score, the test maker then averages your four scores on all sections.
This is also scored using the ACT scale. So what is a good ACT composite score? Many factors will help you determine what a good ACT composite score is for you. But before we get into that, know that the composite score is not the only score that matters!
The ACT score report will provide you even more information about your test-taking experience in the form of subscores. The Reading , Writing, and Math sections also have categories with their own score ranges, as noted in the table below:.
Or, rather, percentile s. Your ACT percentiles compare your scores to the scores of other test-takers. If you scored in the 50th percentile, you scored better than half of your peers.
Seeing as the ACT score range is between 1 and 36, naturally, the highest score that one can receive on the ACT is a Here are some facts to know about the max ACT score:. Getting the highest ACT score, while an amazing feat, is nothing worth breaking your back over. And a 36 will definitely get your application moved to the top of the pile at less competitive institutions.
Still, a 36 was worth a lot more ten or fifteen years ago. My advice? This advice is particularly relevant to admissions at Ivy Leagues and other competitive schools; some of these schools have a whopping quarter of their entering class scoring perfectly on the ACT or SAT.
The ACT, like its cousin the SAT, is a standardized test meant to measure both knowledge gained in high school and potential to succeed in a college setting. The higher the score, the more likely you will get into the colleges of your choice. A passing score on the ACT for someone else might not be a passing score for you and vice versa.
Furthermore, while most schools care about the composite score, some will look specifically for your subject area scores. Objectively speaking, a score of 32 or higher would put you in a competitive position for any school that you choose apply to.
But unless you want to go to super-elite schools, you might find it more useful to focus on your GPA and extracurriculars than aiming for the max score.
Please note that the numbers on the ACT scoring chart are loose projections— a lot of factors affect how high of a score you need to achieve. ACT students with lower scores may still get into their dream schools and students with top scores may not you can skip to the section on ACT scores for the top U. Universities to see the competitive score ranges for a given school.
Still, this is a good place to start as you plan your ACT test prep. So those are good composite scores. But what does a good sectional score look like on the ACT? This translates to the following scores:. Meanwhile, ACT Writing is scored slightly differently.
So what makes a good ACT Writing score? However, this is not the case for ACT Aspire , which uses entirely different scoring scales.
The average exam score was Though not the only piece in the college applications puzzle, your ACT score is the first thing most admissions counselors see. What do all those numbers mean?
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