<p>DS (a junior) just received a 32 composite on April ACT. Math, reading and science were all 32s. English was a 31. </p>
<p>This is up from the 29 he received on his first outing last September. Trying to decide whether it makes sense for him to take it again for a 33. (think a leap to a 34 would be highly unlikely.)</p>
<p>Wondering if colleges see much of a difference between a 32 and 33. Is it considered a big "hump" point for admissions and/or scholarships? </p>
<p>It depends on the school. It is hard to say. The question is whether she has reached her plateau and match with her practice score. Someone posted in another thread that 1 point make the difference for certain scholarships.</p>
<p>One Point can definitely make the difference for certain scholarships, and especially merit-based money to private schools who are searching for higher achieving students then the ones they have. It also depends on the 33. If it were to be 32-33-32-33, they may not view it quite so differently, but if your son is interested in engineering or math, a 31-35-31-35 would look comparatively better to colleges. If you’re looking Ivy, or other top colleges like Stanford, Duke, MIT, U Chicago, or CalTech, you should always take another opportunity to improve. Being the April ACT, I take it he hasn’t gotten his essay and combined writing portion back. This could help or hurt him, but if he already has a 31 in the English category, it probably won’t go up unless your son is in the top 1% of essay writers. So what I’d recommend would be to wait until the essay score comes in, reevaluate your chances, and if the 32 isn’t at the 75th percentile or above for several of your son’s top schools, I’d take it again.</p>
<p>Take it again</p>
<p>Yes, I was expecting an argument about taking it again and wanted to know whether it was worth the parental battle. But he seems to feel like he can do better, particularly since he actually screwed up on the math section (missed a question or bubble or something and had to spend considerable time fixing it.) Still had 10 questions to do at 5 minute warning and had to guess on some just to finish. After all that – and the way if frayed his nerves for the rest of the test – he was pleasantly surprised with the 32. So one more time! </p>
<p>Re the writing test… assuming he does ok on that portion, would he have to take that part again, or could he use the scorre from this test? What is considered a good score on the writing? </p>