<p>I have taken the SAT four times. While my score was steadily improving, I was only able to get as high as 2090 single-sitting. When I took my ACT for the first time in June, however; I received a 34 composite. Unfortunately, my essay score for that test was an 8, which brought my english/writing score to a 30. On the SAT I took from December, 2012, although my score total was a 1940, my essay score was a 10. The schools I'm shooting for are Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt (around that level). Should I send both the ACT and SAT to make up for my essay score? Or do you think the adcoms will overlook the abysmal essay score.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about the essay score, just send the ACT.</p>
<p>Take the 34 ACT and run. The 8 is about average for anyone on the essay, kids are not the writers they think they are, so 8 does not stick out as bad. Plenty of kids at D’s HS have 33+ ACT but only 8 or 9 on the essay. Anything 10+ seems to be very, very rare and does not seem to be linked to high test scores. The only student D knows with a 12 essay has never scored higher than a 29 ACT, and they also have the only two 11’s she’s heard about.</p>
<p>MrMom62 in post #3 is right. As far as I know, neither the College Board nor ACT release percentiles for essay scores. However, you can get a rough idea from the Vanderbilt Common Data Set at <a href=“https://virg.vanderbilt.edu/virgweb/CDSC.aspx?year=2012[/url]”>https://virg.vanderbilt.edu/virgweb/CDSC.aspx?year=2012</a>. </p>
<p>It reports that students in the 75th percentile (SAT score of 2330, which is above the 99.5th percentile nationwide) have an average essay score of 10, and those in the 25th percentile (score of 2070, which is the 95th percentile nationwide) have an average essay score of 8. </p>
<p>For ACT Writing, the corresponding essay scores on the Vanderbilt web page are 9 (75th percentile) and 8 (25th percentile).</p>
<p>Another consideration is that many colleges don’t place much weight upon the essay. They don’t expect you to do well on a 25 minute essay with a prompt you had never seen before, and on a topic on which you know nothing. People just don’t have to write essays like that out in the real world.</p>