@Lananna, what paperwork did you receive for your daughter’s re-score"? Was there any score change hence refund due?
Initially, “Kate” suggested my son to retake the complete ACT again if he’s unhappy with the essay score, who in the right mind will take the whole thing again with a 35 composite? Another sales pitch if you ask me.
She did not explain any process with regarding to the actual re-score, only saying there’s nothing to share. I was also unable to find reasonable expectation from the essay re-score submission from ACT website - should I be surprised?
This very opaque practice by the ACT makes you wonder if ANY work’s being done other than taking the money! They get to keep the money if there’s no change - and they don’t have show any “physical evidence”.
I submitted the forms with the payment from the ACT website. I requested my daughter’s scores and to re-score the writing portion. They’ve sent detailed copies of my daughter’s test with all the answers. They didn’t send a copy of the essays. Later they sent a separate letter stating that her writing portion was re-scored and returned $50.00. In the letter, they promised to re-send my daughter’s new scores to all the colleges which already received her old score. That never happened.
The writing portion went up 9 points. I remember that their site was still showing the old scores. I called. Someone explained to me that the initial scores already generated and are not going to change. They promised to send the new scores to everywhere again. They didn’t. However, the ACT site generated the new scores report. Sometime between the initial letter and the change of scores on their site, they did send the detailed copy of the re-scoring, showing the old and the new scores in the chart.
Go figure…
The info about the re-scoring and also the PDF forms are on this page:https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act/your-scores/score-reports.html - I am sure you’ve used these forms already.
I would confront ACT in writing (don’t call them) and ask for the detailed copy of re-scoring and also to re-score again with you present (they give this option)
It can’t hurt to do it…
All communications with “Kate” at ACT are via emails, there’s no misunderstanding. She specifically said there’s no proof for essay rescore therefore nothing to share. A generic letter sent out with not a single scoring information other than name and address of student is all they send.
I am figuring out way to confront ACT again, however “Kate” totally ignored my request to escalate matter to the management. Unable to find a real name to send complaints.
I also read that there’s something called “Essay Viewer” that’s supposed to be accessible to some high school free of charge where you can see how the students’ essays are scored. Has anyone heard of it?
@katrina2star What you are probably running into is the fact that ACT recently overhauled its rescoring option. What it really did was eliminate it in favor of “score verification.” They put up the changed policy right before the Labor Day weekend, but they’re completely opaque about when it actually took effect. The new policy is that they will simply verify that the essay did get scored by readers. They are no longer having the essay rescored.
They dropped the price of the new “service” from $50 to $40, but I’m not sure how many cases the verification would ever prove useful – perhaps if you imagined that your student’s essay was switched at birth.
Sounds like your recoring may have fallen between the cracks of old policy and new. @Lanaana’s experience was with the old policy, where a change in score was still a possibility.
Essay Viewer is a real thing. You just need a friendly counselor to set it up at the school. I can imagine how frustrating it has been dealing with ACT, but I wouldn’t be too stressed about the whole thing. The Writing score is of very limited importance (none at all at most colleges).
Pushed further an got reply from John Mathias, Senior Manager, ACT Customer Care. Confirming that the new policy of “score verification” taking effect 9/1/16. No more “hand-scoring”. That’s pretty much the only statement he was able to be clear on. Still unable to provide clarify on hand-scoring or the score verification process.
When asked if they “consider the writing test on the ACT to be a good measure of student writing ability,” only 2% strongly agreed, 18% agreed, 44% were neutral, 22% disagreed and 15% strongly disagreed. So 80% of ACs pretty much don’t care about the essay score. This is consistent with the trend of fewer colleges requiring the essay. The results were almost identical for the SAT essay – although 0% strongly agreed that it was a good measure, 19% agreed, 44% were neutral, 21% disagreed, and 16% strongly disagreed. I think that, with ACT’s switch back to the old grading rubric in September, colleges are going to be even more likely to discount the essay scores, since it’s going to be hard to compare a 24 in April to an 8 in September.
For kids who have high composite scores with mediocre essay scores (and I’ll admit, this is my kid too), I would guess they would be even more likely to discount the essay score, particularly if the the kid’s English grades and application essays are good. FWIW – our school’s (extremely experienced; 30 seniors per counselor) college counseling office has essentially told the kids not to worry about anomalous essay scores, So I’ve moved on to stressing about whether his CA essay topic is any good.
I was debating whether to send DS’ old SAT score to colleges along with his ACT. They are consistent scores (max score on math for both, high scores on ACT English and SAT CR, medium scores on both essays. The ACT is a bit higher if you use the old concordance, because the essay lowers the old SAT writing component.
Our college consultant said that colleges (and parents) can read the essay online, and suggested that I read his to see if it is something he would want colleges to be able to see. I didn’t know you could do that with the SAT, and I haven’t looked to see if you can do that with the ACT.
I’ve been asking about the weight on writing scores when I meet adcoms. At a 5-college hotel event, the Harvard adcom said that they do sometimes look at the SAT essays briefly to get a feel for whether the admission essays were written by the same kid who took the test.
Anyway, I read his SAT essay that scored an 8, and I would be more than happy for adcoms to look at it. No spelling or grammar errors (none). Maybe some commas could have been added, but I tend to lean overboard on commas. Good sentence variety. Well reasoned arguments (though that’s supposed to count little on essay scoring). He didn’t go out of the way to add big words, which was probably a big part of the problem. He aims more for clarity. The conclusion paragraph could have used an extra sentence for balance with the opening paragraph. A couple of his 3 examples are somewhat similar, both from the field of computers/technology, so essay graders probably graded that down. But, the examples are certainly things that I’d feel comfortable having the STEMy colleges he’s applying to read, because they show that he’s informed about the history of transistor development from vacuum tubes to the current day, the (derivative) product design process at Apple, and the history of some of the plot ideas in Shakespeare plays.
Anyway, it was interesting to read the essay having seen the relatively low grade. One realizes that there really are formulas you need to follow to get high grades on these. Kids who have disdain for writing too far inside the box don’t do as well as they could.
With regards to Essay Viewer, Senior Manager John Mathias confirms that it’s a service available to high school counselors. They can view copy of essay but no additional comments, scoring information, or rubic will be disclosed.
@katrina2star You can’t view additional comments, scoring information, or rubric because they dont exist. The scorers are drones that spend at most 30-60 seconds on your essay, check a few boxes, and move on to the next one.