<p>Today I got some disheartening news. My act essay was an 8. </p>
<p>I have a 34 composite. 36e/35m/34r/31s. Should I retake the act because of this? How important is the writing section for top schools?</p>
<p>Note that writing section is not factored into the writing score (hence your 36 English score).</p>
<p>If the schools you’re applying to really want a good ACT essay, then I suppose you could retake it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t take it. Also, is it worth ~$50 just to improve your essay score?</p>
<p>That is true… I had the same problem, actually. 36 on English, and 8 on the essay… which stinks. I got an 11 on the SAT essay, and then this…; though I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason why my essay quality fell really low because I was tired by the end of the test.
I guess at the end of the day, I don’t think that I’m going to retake the entire ACT just for the essay. It’s just too much effort at this point, and I’m happy with the rest of my subscores. I can deal with the essay subscore not being as high as I wanted it to be.</p>
<p>I actually didn’t take the essay part…which may or may not have hurt my college applications (since some of them required ACT writing). Oh well, too late now.</p>