<p>Living in Illinois, the ACT writing portion is not given at the school. I've been looking at colleges that do unfortunately require it. Would I automatically be declined if I attempted to apply?</p>
<p>If college requires either SAT or ACT with writing and you submit only ACT w/o writing, you should assume that you will be rejected for failure to submit a required test score. A possible excuse could be that you lived somewhere where only the ACT w/o writing was available but that situation does not in fact exist. The current situation in Illinois is that the ACT w/o writing was the one given on the day that Illinois high school juniors took the test as part of the required Prairie State Achievment Testing for evaluating schools and students in Illinois. The reason the writing section was not given is because the State Board of Education determined it could not afford to pay for the writing section of the test because of funding cuts by the legislature. Be that as it may, that did not prevent you from signing up and taking the ACT with writing on any of the ACT national testing dates and colleges therefor are not waiving the writing requirement for Illinois students. The exception is UIUC which this year is not requiring the writing section of the ACT because it was not included with the PSAE testing.</p>