So I took the ACT with writing for the first time in June and was pleasantly surprised with a composite score of 35, with a 36 on the English portion. However, the writing completely caught me off guard and I know what I wrote was really bad. I haven’t gotten the score for that back yet, but I’m not anticipating anything high, in fact I’m anticipating very low. I felt like I ran out of time and kept on repeating my point. Is it worth it to take the ACT again to try to prepare better for the essay? I’m not so worried about the cost (although of course that’s annoying), but I’m wondering if colleges would look down on me taking it again. I walked into that test not really knowing what to expect, so on my second time I’d expect to do as well if not better on at least the composite score.
i’ve heard the writing portion isn’t too important yet still a requirement, and your composite score could get you almost anywhere. however, if your writing score is less than 9 or 10, i would retake it. check to see if the schools you apply to superscore all parts of the test.
@esperantisto256 Wait until you get the results back. I think you’d still be OK even with a 7-8 essay score with the composite score that you have. A 9 or 10 on the essay is not that easy to get.
Just for some additional reference, I’ve done the SAT 3 times in addition to this. Will colleges think I’m going overboard with tests? That’s my main concern here.
Congratulations on your ACT score that is fantastic! I don’t think colleges put that much focus on the writing in these tests. For the ACT you can usually just send the one test you want them to see the score of. A lot of schools want to see all of the SAT scores so you need to send all three. Were you not happy with your SAT scores? What made you take the ACT? Pretty hard to improve on a 35, I would just go with what you have!!