In trying to get a sense of whether a student’s scores are within the range of acceptable for a very selective university (say USC or Michigan level, not ivy), is there any information available on Reading and Science subscores of the ACT? Why does the CDS list just composite, Math, and English?
How low of a Reading or Science subscore would eliminate a student at the first cut if other scores are within range? McGill shows a minimum of 24 on all subsections, with higher subsection requirements for certain schools, often 26-29. Do most selective US schools have effective minimums for subsections like that?
Given two of the four scores, plus the composite, there’s not a very wide range for the other two, other than unrealistic outliers. Math/Science and Reading/Writing have high correlations, so those existing numbers are probably good proxies.
Have you run into anywhere that the composite is not close to the average of the math and writing?
The common data set (CDS) was created over 20 years ago, and modified over the years, mainly to provide US News and others data to be used in ranking systems. Years back, and it is still true for some colleges today, other than composite scores, many colleges used conversions of section test scores to compare applicants by converting ACT scores to SAT scores. ACT had four sections – English, math, reading and science, while SAT had two, math and reading. The conversion followed was to compare the ACT math and English scores to the SAT math and reading scores, resulting in many colleges treating the math and English sections of the ACT as the more important sections. In fact, there were, and possibly still are, some colleges that used only the math and English scores of the ACT… An interesting historical fact is that the colleges that in the past had a rule that they considered only the ACT math and English sections to determine admission were mainly engineering and science schools, such as Georgia Tech and Rose Hulman, i.e., they ignored the science section.
Thus, the creation of the CDS simply followed common practices that colleges were following by comparing the SAT math and reading scores with the ACT math and English scores, and that comparison in the CDS continues today. The result is that you can find little to nothing on ranges of admitted applicants on the science and reading scores for the ACT. Moreover, most colleges, including your high ranks, declare that they have no designated test score minimums but usually mention you can see the published middle 50% ranges, which do not address ACT science or reading
Thus, trying to figure out the middle 50% ranges for ACT reading and science for any college is usually an exercise in futility. You should likely analyze possibilities based on composite and the math and English scores and assume the others need to be fairly close to the math and English scores, and also be aware that there are still many colleges that consider math and English scores to be the more important section scores.
One analysis I saw found a very high correlation between SAT math and ACT science, nearly the same but slightly higher than the two math sections. So using the math score, or the ACT/SAT concordance to SAT Math, should give a very good estimate of Science scores.