<p>I took the ACT last year and got a 35...yeah anyone would say that's pretty good. Took it for the last time this September and got a straight 36, in all sections. Obviously with a 36 you can say you got a perfect score...but in reality a 33/34+ is already at 99+ percentile. How would an admissions officer look at a 36 vs a still-good-but-not-perfect score? Obviously test scores aren't everything, but I'm kinda wondering...</p>
<p>Most people would probably say that a 34/35 vs. a 36 would not really matter. However, I think that a 36 really does help in college admissions. For example, Brown accepted about half of all applicants with a 36, while only accepting about 20 percent of applicants who got a 33-35. This tells me that colleges do care about a 36, as that is a big jump in acceptance rate for just a few more points on the ACT. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Here's the source for the Brown Statistics I mentioned:</p>
<p>It's really just correlation. Most people with 36s or 2400s have amazing extracurriculars and such to back their scores up. They don't get accepted because they have 36s, though it helps.</p>
<p>You can't tell me though that the people with 34/35s have much worse extracurriculars and GPA's and such than the people with 36s. The people with the 36s just did a little better on one test.</p>
<p>i agree with jman.</p>
<p>just because they accepted half of those with a 36 doesn't mean they accepted them because they have a 36. the applicants who scored a 36 probably just had a perfect gpa, and great extracurriculars.</p>
<p>Colleges want to have a lot of people with 36s when they publish their annual reports. Imagine how good a university would be if it had 300 people with 36s on the ACT(when only 428 got a 36 last year). But yeah those with a 36 are smart and know what they're doing in school if they did that good(almost perfect) because that's what the ACT is based on, your classes.</p>