What are your thoughts on the ACT essay now that the SAT writing will no longer be administered after June? My junior is signed up to take ACT with essay, but wondering if we can safely cancel the essay part. She will be applying to highly selective schools and is fine to do the essay, but if it will no longer be considered (this as yet unknown but I’ve seen speculation, based on the SAT writing cancellation), maybe there’s no point in risking a lower writing score alongside a strong ACT?
The essay for either test was not significant even before College Board cancelled the SAT essay. Personally, I would rather have no essay score than waste energy worrying about the potential impact of a bad one (even though any impact seems likely to be insignificant).
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I would just cancel it. The schools that my son applied to this year, valued their essays more than the ACT or SAT. The essay prompts that the schools give you are now more important than ever, especially if you choose to apply without test scores. My son chose to supply test scores and it worked out to his benefit. He finally got to take the ACT in December and did very well on it. It opened up the floodgates with quite a few more opportunities that came his way. Good Luck with college searches next year. Hopefully COVID-19 will be a thing of the past.
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Essays have pretty much fallen out of favor. The California schools were the last ones clinging to them, and the essay requirement was dropped last year.
I wouldn’t bother taking it.
I don’t think it’s necessary but my daughter feels like writing is a strength of hers and wants to take it. Not sure if you take it and don’t do well if you could choose not to send the score.
Just something to think about… my daughter had an great SAT score but didn’t send it anywhere because her essay score was not as great as she hoped (didn’t prep for it as it was an in-school required exam and she already had a super strong ACT she was sending). She would have loved to been able to just send the regular score without essay but that was not a reporting option.