<p>My son just got his ACT score: Eng 34. Math 36, Sci 35 and a whopping 28 in Reading. A closer look at he breakdown shows that he actually got full credit in Social Studies/Science Reading section. What he failed was in the art/lit section, a disappointing 11 that took composite score down to 33. </p>
<p>He certainly has an option to retake. However he is not sure how much improvement he can get overall. Being a student athlete (swimmer), he thinks spending more effort improving his times in the water probably would yield better chances. He is more confident in getting the his times improved to the the middle or close to to top range of those Elite D3 schools ( ie Chicago, JHU, WashU, CMU etc) roasters by the end of the year if he can focus on it.</p>
<p>So is this ACT good enough for him to give a realistic shot at those Elite schools? he currently has a 4.3+ GPA with not much EC other than his sport which he spends most of his spare time between varsity and club. He will be doing research work in the summer with a big shot professor who was nice enough to take him in, hopefully that will boost his resume. </p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>33 is fine. 28 is bad, yes. But they’ll probably just see it as a fluke. Although, I don’t see harm in him just retaking it to see if he can get his scores a bit more equal. Preparing just for English shouldn’t take much time, and if it does, then he’s doing it wrong.</p>
<p>A 33 puts him in the top 1% of ACT test takers [Score</a> Information | National Ranks for Test Scores and Composite Score | ACT Student](<a href=“ACT Test Scores | ACT Scoring | ACT”>ACT Test Scores | ACT Scoring | ACT) Considering he did better than virtually everyone else in the world, I’d say he’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Just have your son be himself, no need to do every activity that you think will impress college admissions officers.</p>
<p>whenhen, I wish things could be this easy. However, in reality this top 1% does not go very far. Every year there are about 3 million high school graduates applying for college. 1% of those are 30,000 strong. Given the fact that most top schools usually take in about 1000 each year. It would take about 30 schools just to absorb the top 1%. Now you see why kids are pulling all tricks to impress admission officers.</p>
<p>While I didn’t apply to the same level of schools your son is aiming for, in high school I worked as both one of the people you see on the street corners flipping signs and with professors at an extremely well regarded university (neither of those were for college. I just needed money and both the jobs paid a starting hourly wage of >$13/hr). My sign job required me to dress up as a superhero, which I (humorously) wrote about in one of the common app essays, where I bragged that I was a professional superhero. I also mentioned my work experience with professors in another essay and in an extracurricular list.</p>
<p>Well it turned out that my terrible summer mascot job was exactly what the adcoms at some highly selective schools were looking for. One top 30 LAC, in its admissions folder even said that one of their admitted students was a “professional superhero”. A few others, ones that sent personal letters about why they accepted a student made it a point to discuss that mascot job. So even though one of my jobs seemed, on paper, more prestigious and desirable for college admissions purposes, it was that stereotypically awful high school job that impressed the admissions officers.</p>
<p>My son got almost the same score. 36 math 34 science 33
Reading and 29 English . He practiced the English and the next time scored a 35 but went down in math a bit. English is easy to improve. Try again. And some schools superscore the ACT.</p>
<p>Sorry read your post wrong and reversed reading with English but same advice either way.</p>
<p>Was that the only time he took the ACT? If so, I’d definitely recommend that he retake it. He’s only 1 subsection point away from a 34, since a 33.5 will round up, whereas his current 33.25 rounds down, and he might be able to improve that reading score with just a little bit of prep. Just the familiarity of having taken the test before helps. Of course, the other subsections could come down (my D’s subsection scores fluctuated wildly from test to test), but I’d rather send a test with a couple more points on the Reading score and a couple less on another.</p>