The first time I took the ACT, I got a composite of 35 (Reading 35, Math 35, English 32, Science 36) and an essay score of 8. I wasn’t planning on retaking it because I like my composite, but is the essay important enough that I should?
I would not retake. They have changed the essay since you took it. The new essay scores are ridiculously low. It’s now scored out of 36. People are getting essay scores in the teens even though their composite scores are very high.
The writing scores are not used much, and your composite is excellent. If you take the ‘new and improved’ writing colleges don’t even know how to interpret it yet because of the lack of data. Even the old one was fairly useless - the difference between an 8 and a 10 was one piece of supporting ‘evidence’ .
I’d spend the time on essays.
Do not retake. Congratulations on your score!
I don’t think that you need to retake it because many schools just require that it be taken and not a certain score; however, if you are concerned, contact the schools to which you are applying. Congrats on your score!
Don’t retake your ACT just because of your essay score. If it were exceptional it would help a little, maybe but it won’t hurt you
Your ACT English 32 and ACT Writing 8 give you a combined English/Writing score of 29, which gets converted to a 650 SAT Writing score. Your 35 ACT Composite gets converted to a 1560 SAT CR+M, or an equivalent total score of 2210.
So the simple answer is, retake if you think your target schools want to see a score higher than 2210 (or perhaps doesn’t consider the Writing score like Cornell).
Idk for other schools, but after talking to the admissions office at Vanderbilt, they do not look heavily at the writing score for the ACT.
I agree mostly with everyone else in that you should not retake it, UNLESS you want to apply for an honors program or scholarship that requires a higher school. I know one of the schools I looked into required at least a 10 on the writing portion of the ACT to get into their honors program, so I would check in on the requirements of the schools you apply to to double check. It’s rare, so it shouldn’t be a problem, but it doesn’t hurt to double check.