Got a 32 on math and a 30 on English, but only 28 composite, are there any schools that look either solely at math and english or at least consider them to be more important?
Tech schools like MIT/Caltech and engineering programs will certainly consider the math section more important. But generally, the ACT Composite is converted to the equivalent SAT CR+M score (out of 1600) for admissions purposes.
Actually the first two sub-scores for the ACT, the ones you mention, are known to be more reliable indicators because they are much more valid-they are correlated with the factors you would expect-like grades whereas the last two sub-scores are invalid indices-they only add noise to the ACT Composite and they are not correlated with any of the factors you’d expect them to be. As I recall, science is the worst. So, yes the 32 and 30 are more meaningful than the composite. Not sure how many schools officially look at them that way but it is known to be the case and this is based on validity studies.