<p>I was reading another thread a long time ago relating to SAT scores, and an adcom responded to it. The whole question was whether or not colleges see 770s and 800s alike, and the adcom responded that they understand that the day you get a 770, you could've just as easily gotten an 800 on another administration of the same test. Along the same line, though, you could have just as easily gotten a 740. The guy basically was saying that they look at ranges more than exact scores. The ACT, however, doesn't have much of a range so to speak. Do you guys have any idea down to what number a possible 36 would be considered? Like, do you guys think that colleges would see a 31 or a 32 or above as the same as a 36? The concept is that there are discrepancies between different administrations of the tests, so they try to take that into account, I think... Anyway, I was just looking for some opinions or thoughts on this...</p>
<p>No. No college is going to even consider a 32 a 36, no matter who was administering that test.</p>
<p>I was a bit too verbose in my first post; what I essentially was wondering was what was the estimated score range for the ACT like the SAT (like the dotted lines they have on the score reports).</p>
<p>Kieran, I know that no college would consider a 32 a 36 (afterall, they're different scores...), but I'm more interested in the range....</p>
<p>If anything, the range would be 33-36. Though, in my opinion, an outstanding score would start with 34. The 28-32 range is totally honorable also.</p>
<p>ranges don't exactly work like that either...if you have a 32 it's not the same as having a 28...that would just be the range for somebody with a score of 30, somebody with a score of 32 would have a range of something like 30-34 or 31-33.</p>
<p>I don't think colleges even consider the ACT's range. Why not, and why for the SAT? Well, the ACT is only out of 36 points, not 80(0).</p>
<p>Well, excuse me. Those are just the ranges they give in the official ACT book.</p>
<p>Now sit down and eat your wheaties.</p>
<p>haha...that's great; glucose, you missed the point completely; we KNOW that there are no ACT ranges; if there were, they would be on the ACT score reports. The point is that a question or two wrong on the SAT can be 20-30 points off. In the same way, a question or two wrong on the ACT can drop your score an entire composite point.</p>
<p>[I was just saying, that is why colleges don't care about ranges on the ACT, 1 point means more of a difference than the SAT.]</p>
<p><em>edit</em> <em>feels stupid:)</em></p>
<p>^^post 1700! Congrats!</p>
<p>Anyway, "1 point means more of a difference than the SAT"</p>
<p>what exactly do you mean by that?</p>
<p>Missing one question on the ACT lowers your score more if it was converted into the SAT score, than the SAT would.</p>
<p>right...that's why colleges would care more about ACT scores (as far as ranges are concerned, they would pay more attention to their ACT set score ranges)</p>
<p>One question wrong on the ACT hurts more than one question wrong on the SAT; that's why I'm assuming that ACT scores are always lower for schools than their respective SAT scores</p>
<p>ACT is a tought test, you can miss 3 questsions and still be in the 99th percentile but as a result only get a 33 on the section.</p>
<p>My thought, they use the scores to compare you to other students. They know how kids generally do and the more tests you take the better since you eliminate that range factor for yourself (though i wouldnt recommend that). </p>
<p>But speaking of percentiles they know you're roughly +-2-4 percentile from whatever score you got. Thus though if they were looking at two apps one with a 30 ACT and the other with a 31 they would look for another tie breaker.</p>
<p>That said, if they were looking at a 30 ACT and a 33 ACT they would likely choose the 33 whereas the 31 would still compete. </p>
<p>Your app is more than a test score tho, so dont get bent out of shape over it as long as you are in your college's range.</p>
<p>Right, but various books, like Fiske's, have ranges of a 27-33 for most competitive schools.</p>
<p>If I'm not mistaken a 27 is still like 90th percentile.</p>
<p>32+ according to ACTs website puts you in the 99th; 31 is the 98th if I'm not mistaken...</p>
<p>There is a gray bar at there website that supposedly lets you know the range. check it out. i think that most colleges use this scale. 34-36, then 32-33, and then 29-31 so yeah, a 34 or better is a good score for a top college and will easily satisfy them. at least 32 is basically a must for the average applicant to the ivy leauge and id say 29-31 is a good score for most top collges.</p>
<p>Then why do Ivy league schools have ranges of a 27-33 in college guide books?</p>
<p>ranges of 27-33 are going to be the middle 50 percent...so ivys are going to have nearly everybody falling between say 25 and 36, with very few exceptionally good candidates in other fields below 25</p>
<p>For example, Yale is 31-34 and Duke is 29-34. Does this mean for the unhooked applicant that Duke is easier on the ACT applicants with sub-31? Not hardly. Duke has scholarship athletes. It appears that a good rule of thumb to employ at the tip-top selective schools is to re-center (to use a CB phrase) the range by lopping off the bottom 1/4 because "they ain't talking about YOU" being accepted with those scores (unless you are hooked).</p>
<p>So Yale becomes 31-36 range 0-100 for unhooked kids, with the average at 33.5. I think that is probably more realistic, but like everything I'm just speculating as I'm not an adcom. But I found it helpful .</p>