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ACT Superscores are Here! Will Colleges Care?

READ: 3 MIN

SAT takers may not know this, but “superscoring” the SAT, which is done by adding together your best Math and Verbal scores, regardless of whether those best scores happened on the same day, is standard practice at most colleges. But superscoring the ACT - which would be averaging the scores of that test’s four individual sections for a best composite score, even if the individual sections were taken on different days - is not standard at many top schools.

Why is this? Because the SAT has always said that each of their sections could stand alone and that the interplay of scoring both on the same day is not that important. The SAT even allows students to report their superscores as a single score with their Score Choice offering. Colleges responded to this direction from the SAT accordingly and allowed students to superscore. The ACT, on the other hand, long advised colleges that their test was meant to measure achievement in a single sitting and was not appropriate for superscoring. But as the SAT has regained its edge over its testing competition, the ACT has changed its tune on the subject of superscoring. They now say their research indicates that superscoring does provide a better measure of student performance. They’ve even gone as far as to announce that they will allow students to sit for just one of the four sections in a single day, if the student so chooses. This was announced pre-pandemic, but never came to pass as both testing agencies tried to deal with the inability of kids to take any test at all.

many…top schools, including Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Brown, Cornell and Princeton do not (accept AT superscores), accepting only composite scores from a single day

So, now that the ACT is offering a similar service to Score Choice, sending a student’s best scores across all four sections and multiple test dates, will colleges change their stance on superscoring the ACT? Well, some top colleges had already agreed to accept ACT superscoring. Colleges like Stanford, Duke, Columbia, Northwestern, MIT and UChicago all accept superscored ACT results. But many other top schools, including Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Brown, Cornell and Princeton do not, accepting only composite scores from a single day.

You can see this policy differential manifest itself in the middle 50% ACT scores at colleges that do and don’t accept scores. For example, at Yale (a school that does not accept superscored ACT results), its middle 50% ACT range is 32-35. MIT, which does accept superscores, has a range of 34-35. This large gap between the ranges (2 points), does not apply as evenly with the SAT score range. Yale’s SAT middle 50% range is 1480-1550, very close to MIT’s 1520-1580. Yale’s refusal to accept superscored ACT results keeps its lower 25% score at 32, which is the equivalent to a 1440 on the SAT, about 40 points below its actual SAT range.

Will Yale, Harvard and the other top schools that don’t accept superscored ACT results change their minds now that the ACT is offering to send superscored results? So far, they have not made that clear. And the move away from standardized testing in general makes this seem like an issue that the top schools won’t address too soon. Nevertheless, it is an issue that affects many ACT-centric applicants and their choices when it comes to applying early decision. Students with strong superscored ACT results often choose to ED to colleges that accept superscored results, rather than ones that don’t. ED selection is not meant to be affected by matters as trivial as score-choice policies, but it often is.

We’d like to see colleges all agree to superscore the ACT. Given the prevalence of the practice for the SAT it just feels easier for students to know that their best efforts on either test will be viable. This seems even more logical given that colleges are moving away from standardized testing in general and use it only as a way for students to offer another measure of their college readiness.

Tim Brennan
April 26, 2021
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