<p>On december 11th, I took the act, and I got a 24 composite, 23 English, 30 math, 21 reading, and 23 science. I am a sophomore, and this was my first time taking it with no formal training whatsoever. Staring this spring, I am going to take private tutoring to help me improve my score. I am a very good student with a 4.0 in high school. My goal is to get into penn, so I need to improve my score by at least 7 points. I am willing and able to take the tests as many times as I need to. I also will study unbelievably hard and practice and inconceivable amount. </p>
<p>How much can I realistically improve my score?</p>
<p>I could see you improving to see a 30-31 by senior year; That won’t get you into penn in two years though. 33+ atleast by then (32 if you’re lucky).</p>
<p>Ok the first time I took the ACT last year I had no idea what the ACT even was and I had to spend time reading all the directions and figure out how the english section even worked before starting and you can guess how confused I was on the science section. I scored low 20s in the science and got a pretty subpar composite score (although it was still higher than yours no offense). I knew I had to step it up and this wasn’t the person I was and that pitiful performance wasn’t going to get me into the colleges I wanted to go to so this year I took 2-3 practice tests, went in with confidence and scored a 34 in science and did almost 10 pts better in each subsection. Maybe I’m an outlier but it’s definitely very very possible to make any amount of improvement if you want it hard enough.</p>
<p>As Gold3n said, it’s definitely possible. I improved from 28->31->35 over the course of 9 months or so just by taking practice tests in the few days leading up to the test to get me into “test mode.” Unless you’re rich I wouldn’t bother with a private tutor because unless you’re lazy and unmotivated (and based off your post you’re clearly not) you can make major progress by just buying some practice tests and doing them yourself. Just my opinion though.</p>