<p>My rising HS senior sister is getting ready to sign up for Sept ACT test today or tomorrow. She's taken writing portion 3 times, got 8's each time. Should she bother doing writing again or save the $15 and skip it. It seems the grading is so subjective and not worth bothering with. Course she could luck out and get a better writing score too.</p>
<p>i’d definitely take it with writing again. bc virtually all top colleges require it…and what if her composite increases? then she wouldn’t be able to send that score to top colleges bc she didn’t take writing. plus, i don’t think there is score choice with ACT…well, there probably is, but i don’t think a lot of colleges allow it</p>
<p>I agree with qwt2, the writing can’t be separated from their exams. Colleges don’t really look at it but they do require it for admission.</p>
<p>Most of the state universities in Florida she is applying to superscore the sub test scores, so she could get away with not taking the writing and still improve her composite score and meet the writing test requirement with past tests. She’ll probably go ahead and do the writing–she was looking for a way to leave test site earlier if she could skip writing. She wants to concentrate on math portion and if she doesn’t have to worry about other parts of test too much…it makes things maybe less stressful.</p>
<p>^^i mean, the writing is the last portion right? so she still could expend all her energy on the first 4 sections…and just kinda <em>wing</em> the writing…and you never know what could happen. when i say <em>wing</em> i don’t really just mean wing it…there are books out there which delineate what the ACT essay looks for, try princeton review cracking the ACT…i thought they had a thorough review on what to expect for the essay and what to include. when i wrote my essay, i thought it was crap, at least compared to my SAT ones, b/c i had gotten so use to them, but i ended up with a 10…so that was a surprise. so you never know.</p>
<p>Without beating this to death, guess it makes sense to do the writing again. She “winged” the essay the last 3 times. She has time to work on a strategy for doing better on the writing with a game plan next time–she has nothing to lose (except $15 and some time), but can gain by preparing better and getting a better score. Thanks for the input!</p>