I got a 36 on the composite but a 25 on the essay. Will this look super sketchy to colleges? I have no idea why my essay score was so much lower, I’m usually a pretty good writer. I’m definitely not retaking the test. Is it worth it to try asking them to rescore the essay? Will colleges care that much? Is there any way for me to submit only the ACT composite score but not the essay score to a college? I am pretty confused. I realize that scores aren’t the most important thing, and I don’t think it’s worth it to stress over this too much. But I am a little worried that colleges will think I’m a horrible writer, or that my college essays were written by someone else or something.
It’s good to know this is happening with other people too. I think it has something to do with th ACT’s new writing section. It totally messed me up; I got a 34 C but a 27 W. I don’t plan on retaking the test either probably.
My hope is that colleges will just see overall lower writing scores as a trend among applicants, so you’ll still look excellent (wow, 36!). I’m not sure if you can submit just the composite and not the writing, but probably the schools you want to apply to will require the essay. My plan is to just make sure my application essays are my best possible writing and, of course, keep up my grades and take rigorous courses.
I’m in a similar situation. I got a 31 C (low math, but I want to major in English anyway), 34 E and 32 R but somehow a 21 W. I’ve never gotten a score below a 90 back on an essay and consistently get 8s or 9s on AP Lang essays, so it makes no sense.
I’m retaking it in June, and if it comes back with another low writing I’m requesting it to be re-scored. However, I’ve spoken to several admissions officers who’ve said they won’t even bother looking at the writing score. I’m glad to see that this didn’t only happen to me though.
I was in a similar position. 33C but 28W. Ended up getting into a bunch of Ivies, so I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter at all. Congrats on your amazing score!
I got the exact same thing. I got a 30 on a previous writing test, so I’m a bit suspicious. I heard they make a lot of mistakes, so I am having it rescored.
PrepScholar has some answers for why ACT Writing scores are often lower than the other scores.
http://blog.prepscholar.com/new-act-writing-score-low-wrong-late
If you scroll down to the chart with the heading
Score Composite English Math Reading Science Writing
you can see that the percentiles that correspond to writing scores and each of the subscores diverge quite a bit when you reach scores in the mid-twenties. For example, a score of 25 corresponds to only the 75th percentile in Reading, but it is still the 90th percentile for Writing. Why they didn’t make the writing scores match with the other scores better? I don’t know. Maybe they will adjust this in the future so students won’t feel so upset looking at the lower numbers.
This is not to say that there haven’t been errors in the Writing scores. Obviously there have been, or else people wouldn’t be reporting dramatically higher scores after having a rescoring done. It just means that a lot of the writing scores that look low actually represent a higher percentile than people realize.
There are many people in this situation. My D just got a 34 composite, with a 36 in the English section - and got a 23 on the writing. She is a very strong writer who attends at a challenging prep school that emphasizes writing skills above all else.
It is pretty clear that the ACT has created a test that does not test general “writing skills.” It appears to test the ability to “write an essay specifically to fit the ACT essay formula and check the appropriate boxes.”
It’s very disappointing.
Many of these instances can rightly be blamed on the makers of the ACT, who updated the essay (Writing) portion of the test but did not reflect those changes in the most recent printing of its book. It’s possible you could use that as your excuse–the format of the essay was changed, but you were caught unawares.