Composite 36
Math 36
Science 36
Reading 36
English 35
writing 23!
Is anyone else getting this huge discrepancy? Should this test be taken over if trying to attain acceptance to a highly competitive school?
How many pages did you write? Prob less than 3pgs.
Yes, got a 34C and a 22 on the writing, hoping that schools aren’t giving the writing score (or the combined writing and language arts score) a heavy weight in admissions decision.
mdwstMP, how many pages did you write?
2 pages …
There’s your answer. Try writing 4pgs. Yes, it’s supposed to be quality over quantity, but length still rules.
I would like to kindly disagree with @mmk2015. On the ACT’s website, it lists examples of essay that scored 6’s, 5’s, 4’s, etc. on each domain. The perfect scoring essay only has 513 words. That’s probably 2-3 pages, but certainly not 4 pages worth of material. Granted, length does matter and is noted, but I think the graders will favor a tight, well-written essay over four pages of vomit. I would wager to say that the low writing scores are due to: 1) Kids may not have been fully prepared for the new writing format and wasted too much time planning (shortening length and having to rush through ideas)/did not plan examples ahead of time 2) The realization that a 28 writing is actually pretty good. 3) Graders/scale might be being a little harsh. The percentiles are very different. @Hermit9 wrote a good guide to getting a 36 (and yes, he had 3.75 pages). But he probably is fundamentally a good writer too.
With a 36 composite and a 23 writing should this test be retaken for Ivy League applications?
To add to above ^^^ this application will be for a stem major.
i like this scaling way more! i went from getting 6 essay (i really dont understand why) to getting a 29 on this one! overall i am very happy!
oh and i wrote 2 pages.
length =/= quality
and to add to what i just said, i do have very small handwriting so it would be around 3 pages of “normal” handwriting.
i had 5 paragraphs: intro, wrote about my viewpoint and supported it, chose one of the other viewpoints and wrote about why that view isn’t as “good” as mine and further supported mine by that, did the same exact thing for the last viewpoint in this paragraph, and then wrote a conclusion
length =/= quality
If Shakespeare himself wrote half a page, I doubt he would score even 24.
Yes, quality is what matters, but I’ll take my chances with 4pgs over 2pgs any day 
@mmk2015 go for it. just dont add unnecessary fluff to ur essay to make it longer.
All 36s. Writing 27.
Do consider, the curve is VERY steep. A 27 is 95th percentile.
http://www.act.org/aap/pdf/NormsChartSTEMELAWriting-Web2015-16.pdf (Last column)
I like the new test’s consideration of insight as well as writing.
EDIT: My essay was 3 pages, medium handwriting. I wonder if references to Thoreau helped or not? I think I misspelled his name 
oh and my examples were pretty relevant to today’s society. used the gay rights movement (dating back from like the 1970s to now so i used a LOT of details) and how peaceful protesting led to gay marriage being approved. then i used kim davis being a form of one of the other views and showed how her form of protest was obviously not very effective since she got arrested and hardly anyone likes her (except the other bigoted conservatives out there) and then threw in something about the civil rights movement, specifically MLK jr
35 E, 35 M, 34 R, 32 S, 36 W.
Can’t complain. 
@Hermit9 jeez 36 W? what did you do to get your scores so high? my superscore right now is a 29 
@metalinguist ugh so many geniuses on this website. my superscore is 29
what did you do to get all 36s? i havent prepped (im so lazy and this semester is so much work so i havent had time). is it too late to prep for the oct act and improve my scores? (sorry this is off topic but i just wanted to ask)
I had a 36W
I was not expecting that but I wrote a pretty good essay; I can’t remember how long it was