If your rank for subscores for the 3 math sections is 96%, 96%, and 95%, then how could your math overall rank be 93%? Assuming that the 3 math sections include all of the math questions on the test (which is what every testing key for the test shows) then I can’t conceive of a way that you could have a higher percentage on every subsection than your overall score. In fact your overall score rank should be higher because not as many people would score that high on all 3 subsections.
To make things even more interesting, in the test taken in October 2015 the subscores were slightly lower than the April 2016 subscores and yet the October overall math score is higher. As I understand it the ranks (both subscores and overall score) are normed so that x score on a test taken last year equates to x score on this year’s test.
I’ve requested the ACT Test Information Release Form and after reviewing that know that I can consider asking for handscoring.
ACT’s explanation for this is that not all math questions are divided into the 3 subscore groups. As I said above, their own scoring materials online indicate that all of the questions fall into one of the 3 groups so I’m skeptical of their explanation. On the other hand, I believe the scoring would all be done electronically and don’t see how their algorithm to determine the overall math score could be this flawed.
If there’s a statistician out there or someone who knows something I am missing, then I’d greatly appreciate you sharing. Otherwise I guess I’ll wait for the month until I receive the Test Information Release materials and see if it makes more sense then.
@Vapersecutor this isn’t really ACT-related, but I can think of a theoretical situation in which your overall rank could be lower than the rest of your ranks/percentiles.
Suppose you place 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, in three different events (perhaps a triathlon, or maybe an exam) in which your overall rank is determined by the sum of your scores in the three events. And it turns out that the three different people that placed first completely blew the rest of the competition out of the water. To your surprise, you end up 4th, because the three people that finished first in their events did well enough.
Point is, tournaments, ranks, ACT scores, etc. may not be as obvious as they seem.
Clever explanation! It definitely let’s the common folks like me to understand a complex situation.
Clever!
I believe I know the answer to your question. For some subscores, you can miss several and still get a 17/18. For others, if you miss 1 or 2, you are at like a 14/15/16. But, these subscores don’t matter––they’re there just to help identify strengths and weaknesses. All that matters is total correct, which is then scaled. Let me know if that makes sense.
Another analogy adding to previous post. It’s also the same logic that, for someone’s GPA/grades, you could have a 96%Q1/95%Q2, but a 93% S1.