<p>how many problem or questions can you miss in each section and still end with a grade higher that 30?</p>
<p>i don't understand the no penalty concept.</p>
<p>EX in math you can miss 5 and still get a 30 or something</p>
<p>The no penalty concept just means that your score is based on the number of questions you get correct. SAT does the same thing but just removes a quarter point for every wrong answer. Thus, ACT score calucluation is simpler. I’m not sure if that answered teh question… X.X</p>
<p>All sections except for science are split up into parts that add up to 36. So if the English section has two areas, each of those areas’ scores are calculated by simple division to get a number out of whatever the area’s worth.
Say english is divided up into
20 Sentence completion
16 reading ****e</p>
<p>You get 36/40 on the sentence completion. That’s 90%. So that translates to a 18/20 in that area of ACT English.
Then on the reading ****e you get 24/32. That’s 75% == 12/16.</p>
<p>Adding those up results in a 30 on the ACT English section.</p>
<p>sorry I forgot the specifics… but you get the idea, hopefully.</p>
<p>@Disco
Actually, math is split into 3 sections.</p>
<p>“Subscores do not necessarily add up to your score for a subject area test.”</p>
<p>xplosneer
I never stated how many sections each subject had. But I was mistaken on the subscores adding up. Want to elaborate on the whole process?</p>
<p>@Discobiscuits. You’re right, I misread the first sentence. Apologies on that one, we’re not trying to confuse the OP :)</p>
<p>I don’t know what the exact formula is for the section scores is. I can only say for sure that they do put different weight on the math sections: I got a 34 on my first try with a 18/16/16, which doesn’t really make sense averaged(not trying to brag here, just a solid example).</p>
<p>They also tend to curve by test obviously, based on performance of the control questions they have, meaning that missing a question doesn’t mean loss of a point sometimes, but that’s more chance than a real way to approach scoring. </p>
<p>That’s the OP’s second question essentially - if nationally people do poorly on the questions that remain the same, this can indicate the other questions were slightly harder and ACT allows the scoring to change based on that.</p>
<p>Hope this helps in some way.</p>
<p>To get above a 30 on the test, a general rule of thumb would be to miss no more than 20 on the entire test. So, hypothetically speaking…
English: -5 = 31
Math: -5 = 31
Reading: -7 = 30
Science: -3 = 32
That would give you… a 31.</p>
<p>And to clarify the scoring rules:
On the SAT, let’s say you miss 5 questions on some reading section. And let’s also assume that there were 20 questions. So the calculations would work like this:</p>
<p>20 points - 5 (the ones you missed) - 5(0.25) = 13.75
This would round up to 14 to give you a raw score of 14/20.</p>
<p>On the ACT, there is no penalty. Therefore the 0.25 will NOT apply here. So lets put ourselves in the same scenario. Let us say that you missed 5 questions out of a possible 20. The calculations would look like this:</p>
<p>20 points - 5 (the ones you missed) = 15
Therefore, you would have a raw score of 15/20.</p>