I first took the ACT in September of my junior year which i am currently in. I scored a 26 but I had just had surgery on my eye and was super nervous so my score isn’t reflective of my ability.
I then took the ACT in April scoring in the 30s without studying and with higher subscores in every category. I am attending a long summer program at an ivy league this summer and will be doing rigorous act prep. I am hoping to get a 34-35 on the September test and attend a selective college.
Should I request to delete my 26 ACT score? Will it reflect poorly on me?
To delete a test record, you simply have to submit a written request to ACT. ACT will then mail you a form to complete and return. After you submit the form, the test record will then be permanently deleted from ACT’s records.
You can delete it if desired particularly because you already have a higher score and have plenty of time to do it and thus can actually get a deletion done before you ever apply to college. In deciding, be aware of the following:
There are some colleges that require you to send all ACT scores but for none of those does that rule apply to a deleted test.
If colleges are to be believed, you would have no downside in not deleting the test and providing the test scores of both the test with a 26 and those with higher scores. Colleges uniformily claim they use the highest scores (depending on college,either the test with the highest composite or the highest section scores from multiple tests) to determine admission and do not hold lower scores against you if you submit multiple tests. Despite that, many applicants with lower scores have a hard time convincing themselves that is actually true.
Deleting the test with ACT assures that ACT will never provide a college with the test score or even tell a college that you took the test. However, you could still have an issue. Many high schools put all your test scores on the offical transcript sent to colleges. If your high school does that, you will need to make sure it does not send the test score. When you delete the test, ACT will send a notice to your high school that the test is no longer validt. However, you are the one who needs to make sure and verify your high school in fact eliminates it from your record.