I’ve agreed with a friend that it would be a good idea for her son to retake the ACT, on which he got a 29. I said that I think it would help if his score starts with a “3.” That is, there might be more value in going from 29 to 30 (or above) than in going from 26 to 27, 27 to 28, or 28 to 29. The student and his mom know what he had difficulty with and kind of why (he didn’t finish the language arts part(s)). Is it hard to go up one point?
My children scored very high the first time and didn’t retake the test, so I don’t have personal experience. I’d like to know if I’m off base with my comments to my friend. Thank you.
My gut is yes, that a score starting with"3" would be better but it depends where he’s applying. If he’s already in the ball park it may not matter. My daughter’s score actually went down the second time. She was so focused on getting the science section up that the rest went down. Her superscore was obviously higher but she was really disappointed that the overall score didn’t go up as well. She just assumed that she’d get similar scores on the other sections again and didn’t do enough practice sections.
For some schools, any score below 30 has almost no chance. It is not the value for certain score, it is which school you have a chance at certain score. Obviously, the higher the score may give you a better chance at admission or merit scholarship at certain schools.
Since he already knows his weak area, it should not be difficult to raise that score. If he didn’t finish the section, just working on timing should improve it. He should definitely retake it, not just because he can score higher, but because some scholarships (depending on the school) have 30 as the minimum requirement. Nobody would want one point to make him lose out on thousands of dollars. It is more than possible for him to raise the score as long as he doesn’t completely neglect the other sections. This is coming from a student who raised their score from a 20 to a 30 to a 32 to 34 (we’ll see after the results for April ACT come out).
Your friend’s son should definitely take the ACT again. He can order books off of Amazon that have practice exams and focus on the section he had difficulty completing. He can also sign up for a prep class in the area. My oldest took the ACT three times and my DS19 is taking it for the 3rd time this June.
There is a big difference at some schools between a score of 29 and a 30. For example, at Florida State University, a 29 ACT score results in a 1/2 out of state tuition waiver. A score of 30 results in a full out of state tuition waiver so the student is charged in state tuition ($6400/year). The applicant also needs the corresponding gpa to qualify (4.0 core classes on their converted scale). At schools with automatic merit, a high ACT (usually 30 and over) is essential.
Has he taken the SAT? Some kids do better on one test vs the other (SAT vs ACT) and most schools will accept either. My D had a similar ACT as mentioned in OP but she did better from the get go on the SAT, then studied & got her score to where she was happy. Never retook the ACT.
I personally don’t think having a 3_ score matters in and of itself. Obviously it matters if that’s an official cutoff for something.
My kid took each test and then decided which to improve.
One of my kids was 10 points away from a big score level and decided he wasn’t taking the SAT again. If he was satisfied, that was fine with me. He didn’t feel it would make a difference for scholarships (his scores were better than his grades), and he was probably right.
He might have felt differently if he knew that the cutoff for a big merit award was a particular number, but the schools on his list didn’t mention specific targets. (I took the SAT a third time to hit a specific number that would have qualified me for desperately-needed merit $$. Don’t do that on the day of senior prom, when noone has asked you to go.)
It really depends on where the student is applying to college, what his other stats are… and whether he is motivated to retake. My daughter was like @momofsenior1 – she had a 27 composite, retook and even though some subscores went up, others went down, and she still had a 27 composite – though superscored it became a 28. She also had very high grades and class rank and got accepted into several colleges where her scores were bottom quartile. Many colleges do place higher value on high school grades than test scores – if grades are strong, a one or two point increase in ACT score might not make much of a difference for a particular school; and if the grades are on the weaker side, then focusing on test scores might be wasted effort.
Depends entirely on the school. At a school like Michigan State where middle 50% ACT is 23-28, the difference between a 29 and a 30 probably doesn’t make all that much difference because either score puts the student in the top quartile. At Wisconsin where the middle 50% is 27-31, a 29 is right in the middle while a 30 is in the top half and just shy of the top quartile, so it might matter more. At Yale the middle 50% is 32-35 so it probably doesn’t matter because absent some really compelling hook that student doesn’t have much of a chance.
But I agree that purely as a matter of first-glance optics a 3 looks better than a 2 as the first digit in an ACT score, just as with the SAT a 7 or 8 looks better than a 6 or 5. And I also agree that some schools use ACT 30 as the threshold for merit scholarships.
First-glance optics are probably not what college ad coms are looking for. More likely they either delve deeper (looking at subscores) - or are plugging the number into an academic index calculation which also factors in GPA… and where the actual underlying score disappears from view.
A higher score alway helps to some extent --but whether the difference between a 29/30 is more meaningful than a 28/29 or 30/31 may simply be a psychological thing that doesn’t impact the decisions of the peope whose jobs it is to work with that kind of data. So again…the answer is, “it depends.”
So you can see that in the 30’s, the percentile significance between scores starts to narrow - and to the college ad com, the more important number might be the “9” in the percentiles – and friend’s son is already in 92% percentile. Would being in 94% be all that different?
My daughter balked at taking the ACT again after scoring 29. She got into 12 out of 12 schools, with nice merit at 9 schools (instate UIUC gave nothing, OOS Indiana and MN also zip). But having a 30+ rather than a 29 would have put her in honors programs at a few schools, rather than having to apply or petition. She had really good grades from a top high school, so I think that made a difference.
I’d add that its also helpful to look at the subscores. My daughter’s composite was brought down by math & science-- but that reall was just confirmatory of what the high school transcript already showed. (All A’s, but coursework overall weak - her arts-focused high school didn’t even offer AP or honors STEM courses) So strong English/Reading, weak Math/Science. Her applications were probably evaluated in that context – no one expected her to be taking anything beyond general ed level math/science classes in college.
Conversely, if your friend’s son is more STEM focused, and has strong Math/Science scores and seems to be headed toward a STEM major, then his weaker scores on English/Reading subtests might not be all that important.
I’m not arguing against the kid retaking, IF he wants to – I think it’s always a good idea when a student isn’t satisfied with their score. I’m just suggesting that if the student is happy with his score, it may not be all that helpful for the parent to push a resistent or ambivalent kid toward retaking.
One thing to note is that some schools pay attention to the data going into rankings. In the common data sets ACT 30-36 and 25-29 are different reporting categories. So while one point usually doesn’t make much difference, a 29 vs a 30 could make all the difference at a few schools.
@lastone03 Do you have any proof that OOS students are held to a higher standard than the general ACT range of 27-31 for the middle 50%? I couldn’t find any such reference
If you go into the forum for UW Madison and read the acceptance threads there are definitely higher scoring OOSstudents that get deferred or rejected. It’s pretty common for especially more elite publics to have a higher acceptance threshold for OOS students.