Help interpret this ACT score

May 23, 2008 8:25 PM

Help me interpret this ACT score & figure out what to do with it...

My son took the ACT last year (9th grade) and again this year (10th grade) mostly just for practice. We didn't send it to any schools. Both years he had the same composite - 22. However, his science score went up 4 points and his reading went down 2 points. Everything else was pretty much the same. For whatever reason he had a brain cramp and had trouble with the one reading section (He said he had trouble focusing). Is there a way to tell what his composite would have been if his reading score had stayed the same? Here are the score (9th grade listed first):

English: 20/20
Math: 19/20
Reading: 23/21
Science: 24/28
Composite 22/22

Also, would there be any benefit to sending the scores to colleges at this point (he's interested in a science field).

Thanks!

posted by caroljean63 to education (9 comments total)

I don't recall exactly, but I think when I applied for college, I was told that they took the highest from each section. At least for the SAT - the ACT wasn't important at any of the colleges I applied to. Maybe ask around a bit? In any event, I think the composite is just a rounded average, so a difference of 2 more points would not make a difference here.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 8:40 PM on May 23, 2008

I think his composite would have been 23 if his reading score had stayed the same.
posted by iconomy at 8:44 PM on May 23, 2008

I work at a university, and we do not do anything with test scores until after we receive an application. If you will be charged to send the scores to schools now, I'd advise against doing it. Also, his score should be much, much higher when he takes the test as a junior when he is actually getting ready to apply to universities. Put another way, the highest score is 36 and the cut off for most scholarships is 29 or 30, so even if a university were to look at incoming test scores, I doubt that showing them his would be any benefit right now. It is good that he's getting used to how the tests are administered now, though; this will allow him to score much higher on subsequent tests.

If he had scored 23 on Reading again, I think this would have brought his composite up to 23. The composite is the average of the scores of the sections, so (all the sections together)/4 and then rounded to the nearest number.
posted by Polychrome at 8:47 PM on May 23, 2008

The main thing colleges will care about is the composite score. The math one might be important because he might be able to go to a more advanced class if he gets a good enough score on it.

I would encourage your son to really study hard for the test and take it at least one or two more times. I got a relatively high score on mine (kind of got lucky, and I'm good at tests) and based solely on that score, I got a 4,000/year scholarship from my college. So it's definitely important.

No point in sending scores now; college don't need them until he applies. He should take it again and get the best score he can, and then send it to them maybe in 11th grade or the beginning of senior year.
posted by DMan at 8:48 PM on May 23, 2008

The point DMan makes about math is a really good one--a lot of schools have an introductory math course/prerequisite that can be waived by a placement test or a minimum ACT score in math (ours is 25) but typically don't have any useful application like that for the other sections.
posted by Polychrome at 8:55 PM on May 23, 2008

At my school a certain ACT writing score would get you out of the first English class. I know this because I got confused and thought it went by the composite score, and didn't sign up for it, so I took the classes out of order.
posted by delmoi at 9:07 PM on May 23, 2008

If you take the test multiple times, WashU will take the highest score from each section and average them to create a new, possibly higher composite score. (or at least they did about 8 years ago). I don't know how many other schools do this, but it's worth inquiring.
posted by chrisamiller at 9:31 PM on May 23, 2008

One thing with these tests is that performance has as much to do with being good at test-taking as it does on knowing the material. Practice tests and maybe a test-prep class would be helpful.

One of the things that I found that people had trouble with in the reading tests was in realizing that the reading sections were "synthetic". Had NOTHING to do with the content of the story, and everything to do with your ability to extract and comprehend. If he said he had trouble focusing during that section, that might be part of his problem. He was trying to understand the story on its own, rather than just use it as reference material for the questions being asked.

Like on the math sections- I used to have trouble with those damned pattern recognition questions, until I learned to analyze the numbers and discover the pattern, rather than trying to recognize the pattern organically. It's not just whether you know what a fibbonacci sequence it, but that you can analyze the numbers and determine what is going on.
posted by gjc at 8:09 AM on May 24, 2008

One thing with these tests is that performance has as much to do with being good at test-taking as it does on knowing the material.

This is absolutely true. I didn't study for the ACT when I took it, and I attribute my score mostly to the fact that I'm pretty good at taking tests. So anything he can do to improve his test taking abilities will go a long way.
posted by DMan at 8:14 AM on May 24, 2008