I took the 2015 December ACT, and when I got my scores back, I initially thought I did very well. I managed to get a 36 composite score, with a 35 on my English Section.
However, the writing scores were released today, and I was shocked to see I had only gotten a 22/36 on the Writing Test. I have never really been that great at timed writing tests (I got an 8/12 the first time I took the ACT), but I was expecting something in at least the low 30s.
Is my writing score an issue? I’m planning on applying to the engineering schools at places like umich and purdue, and I’m not sure how big of issue my 22 will be. I read online that it’s a red flag for colleges when the applicants writing score is far lower than their composite, but I’m not really sure what I can do about it. Any advice?
There may have been issues with the grading, and I emailed the ACT through their testing complaints area on the website.
To answer your question, I don’t think your bad writing will be an issue. Colleges don’t see writing as a big deal on the SAT and ACT. They will look at your essays.
weird, got a 32 composite and a 33 on writing. Granted, I did not try on science (28) since i took the exam to superscore. it was a foolish mistake, but I think many people have this problem. i think a 36 overhwhelms your 22, but i wouldnt know.
Exactly the same issue here. Got a 34 on my English Section (Probably missed two questions because I didn’t sleep the night before the test) and a freaking 25 on my Writing Section. I can’t even explain this mess. But I heard you can ask your high school to use a free program called Essay Viewer to check if the essay ACT scored is yours or not.
directs to a pdf uploaded by ACT. According to this report, your writing score scored higher than 80% of the other test takers and my 25 scored higher than 90%. I have no idea what to make out of this.
A lot of colleges don’t even consider the writing section. Plus, even if they do they’ll have your personal statements and supplements to read, so they can judge if you’re a good writer or not. I wouldn’t worry about it. So many people have been complaining about the new ACT writing section and admissions officers are probably aware of the unreliability on the writing section.
I scored a 32 composite and a 30 writing on the September ACT, and decided to take it again in December in hopes of increasing my composite score by a few points. I just got my scores back today, and while I did increase my composite by 2 points to a 34, my writing score dropped to a 24. Not to brag, but this just seems highly implausible to me because I scored a 35 on English and a 36 on Reading… which should mean that my English skills are up to par. Additionally, I really cannot figure out how my writing score could have dropped 6 points from the last time I took the ACT, as I did not study at all for the September one but busted my butt for this one. Should I contact ACT and ask them what exactly happened? Will this writing score drastically affect my chances of getting into a decent college?
Email them. In fact MANY parents AND students should email them because their scale seems quite off.
A 25 on the writing is equivalent to a 28 on other sections! Except that colleges won’t know that.