My son just got his ACT scores back. He received a composite score of 35, with 36s in math and science, 35 in reading and 34 in English.
However, his writing score was a 26, a far cry from his other scores.
Is it worth his retaking the ACT given he wants to apply to very competitive (top) school’s of engineering? How much would they care about the writing portion.
Very curious to hear your thoughts.
Take it again. Why not. So e schools superstore the act too. Our son took act twice. No sat.
Call the colleges you’re probably applying to and ask them if they even care about the Essay. Most probably won’t care, but some might.
Don’t base your decisions on opinions from other students and parents. The colleges can give you direct answers.
personally, I’d say no. That is a great score…the writing is not very important, esp for a COE applicant.
Some schools show what they do with the essay on their common data set: nothing, use to verify common app essay, etc.
I’d say no. But call the school and ask about the weight of the essay
I like your user name!
Probably no need for a retake, given the flux of the writing test.
As stated above, best to call and check.
Couldn’t help it with the username. Seems like hell to me. 
Does he have any other scores or credentials that demonstrate that he can sting along some sentence? If so, seems like he should not worry about re-take.
Well, he will likely have an A-/B+ in AP Lit and has gotten As in English as a freshman and sophomore. (His AP Lit teacher is a notoriously tough grader.)
We are in the same boat with very similar score–35C–36M, 35S, 34R, 33E, and a 7 on the writing, despite As in AP English (S says he does better with more time). S is into programming and applying for CS. Some of the schools don’t care about the writing score (we are happy about this). For the others, we are all hoping that they care more about the fact that he can write code well, even if his writing real words under pressure apparently isn’t all that great. I have decided not to worry about it because he is clearly a math/science/Cs kid and his essay shows that given time he is coherent. S was already accepted to one strong program, we will see about the others…
Same here. Not sure what we’ll do. I am going to get more information from his colleges of choice and go from there. Thanks so much for the advice.