I’m a junior now and I recently took the October ACTs and November SAT’s to get a feel for the tests and see which one I would get tutored for and retake. However, I got a 35 Composite on the ACTs (Math-34, Writing-34, Reading-36, Science-35, Essay-10), was thrilled with my results and thought until recently that I wouldn’t have to retake either test. But, because I want to go to some of the top schools for a business/finance major (Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford), I was told that my 34 in math will hurt my overall chances of admission. Still, I’ve also heard that once you get into the 1 percentile 34-36 range that schools essentially count the scores as the same and that any possible improvement to my score would not make much of a difference. I run out of time on the math section (I guessed on around 5 questions) and that could be viewed as having a lot of room for improvement (I also went into the test with no prep) but also as getting very lucky, which could mean that I may do worse on some sections (I expected nowhere near a 36 on reading and don’t know if I can repeat it). Various schools I’m applying to (ex. Duke, UPenn, Stanford) require I send all ACT scores so this may be somewhat risky.
This ended up being a very long question, so if you don’t want to read all of it: I got a 35 on my ACTs but only scored a 34 on math, which Top Schools may think is low for a finance oriented major. Should I retake it?