<p>Are there any scholarships available that reward high essay scores on standardized tests? Will colleges care about the 10? The ACT website says it's in the 99th percentile. Surely there's a way to take advantage of this score...?</p>
<p>Colleges care very little about what kids score on the SAT/ACT essays. There really are no awards for it, there aren’t awards for high ACT or SAT scores. 2400s and 36s simply get bragging rights and a leg up in admissions (which even a 12 on the essay probably wouldn’t give). </p>
<p>Sorry to burst your bubble.</p>
<p>"…there aren’t awards for high ACT or SAT scores." Oh please.</p>
<p>Not really… essays are perhaps the least important aspects of both tests. Besides, if there were awards, they’d mostly be given out to those that got 12s or, in rare cases, 11s (but there aren’t any).</p>
<p>not even close… 10 essay is NOT in the top 1 percent…</p>
<p>If you may, think of the distribution as probability when rolling 2 6 sided dice.</p>
<p>The chance of getting/receiving/grading a twelve paper is ~2.78%–which in and of itself is unfortunately pretty common.</p>
<p>The chance of getting a 10, on the other hand, is probably around 8.33%.</p>
<p>So getting an essay that gets a 10 as a score is not prestigious, by any means. It just shows that you are in the top 10%.</p>
<p>^I think your reasoning is wrong. It’s not right to apply stats like that.</p>
<p>A 10 essay may not be in the top 99 percentile, but think about it like this. The ACT says a 9 essay is in the 94th percentile, while a 10, 11 and 12 essay are in the 99th percentile. Thus, we can deduce that a 10 essay is anywhere between the 94th and 99th percentile. This is due to the fact that the ACT only allows 13 possible essay scores, which means that the percentiles will, inevitably, be skewed.</p>
<p>Anyways, there are any awards for a 10 essay. Though a 10 essay may be impressive, the awards (if there were any), would be given to the 12 essays like CantConcentrate said.</p>
<p>^ We both agree that a 10 essay doesn’t receive any recognition . But you’re logic is flawed in the sense that there’s no exact rubric for what is or what’s not in the 99th percentile. Like, a rubric is made before they can judge any essay. If everybody writes stellar essays, then the 99th percentile wouldnt be a 10 anymore. On the same note, what I said was complete approximation. To say that 1% of people get <10 on the ACT is essay is pure fiction…:p</p>
<p>^ No, my logic is very sound. Let’s consider the SAT essay. </p>
<p>Consider the SAT essay distrubution which can be found here
<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>Now, approximating from figure 2, we can say that there were approx.
-75000 essays that recieved a 10
-20000 essays that recieved a 11
-10000 essays that recieved a 12</p>
<p>Note: I’m being quite generous with the 12 essays, because it seems way less than 10000.</p>
<p>There was a total of 1,376,745 people in the cohort of 2006.</p>
<p>This means that a 10 SAT essay is approx. in the (75000+20000+10000/1,376,745)*100 percentile = top 7.6 percent.</p>
<p>This is resonably close to my estimate of of top 6% (94-99 percentile) on the ACT essay. (And remember, I’m being generous with the number of 12 scorers). Furthermore, the general consensus on CC is that the ACT essay is slightly more challenging than SAT essay, thus further providing more evidence (though anecdotal).</p>
<p>EDIT:in post #6, I meant to say aren’t any…</p>
<p>^ You’re still wrong.</p>
<p>Do the division , using your statistics, and you still find that 5.7% of everybody who took the SAT got a 10. That’s considerably more than 1% …which is what we’re arguing about.</p>
<p>And the reason why people would score higher on the ACT essay is b/c the written portion is not required, whereas it is on the SAT. In order words, generally, the people who feel they are going to do well on the ACT essay, take it; on the other hand, it is, for lack of a better word, a requirement to complete the essay portion.</p>
<p>Think about it. 1% of people getting a 10 is still pretty harsh. The 12, maybe, could constitute a lower percentage, but certainly not the 10 essay.</p>
<p>No, I argued that because there are only 13 possible grades, the 10 ACT essay is really 94-99 percentile, with a 11 and 12 essay being for sure 99 percentile. What I was saying is that my logic of looking at the percentiles published by ACT is more sound than hypothetical dice rolling.</p>
<p>My ds got a 10 on his essay, their website states it is top 1% nationally.</p>
<p>@ldavis: Not necessarily. Like the MCAT (and other graduate study exams), percentiles are pretty skewed for the ACT considering that there aren’t many data points to consider. Like the posters above me have shown, a 10 is really 94th to 99th percentile.</p>
<p>An 11 would be 99th percentile (most likely 99-99.6) and a 12 would also be in the 99th percentile (99.7-99.9).</p>