Hey guys, I'm getting ready to take the ACT and I'm a bit confused about the scoring process. How does the scale for the ACT work? Can anyone explain the difference between the raw score and the scaled score? Thanks a lot!
Hi there! Great question—understanding how your ACT score gets calculated can definitely help you strategize for the test.
The ACT contains four main sections: English, Math, Reading, and Science. For each section that you finish, you'll receive a raw score. This is simply the number of questions that you answered correctly. If there are 60 questions in the Math section and you answered 50 correctly, then your raw score for that section would be 50.
After that, your raw score is converted into a scaled score, which will be a number between 1 and 36 (36 being the highest possible). Every ACT test has a unique scale for the conversion of raw scores to scaled scores, called the "curving" process. The purpose of this is to account for minor differences in test difficulty between different test administrations—so a 25 on one test date demonstrates the same level of proficiency as a 25 on another date.
Each of your four section scores gets averaged into a composite score, which is also a number between 1 and 36. If, for example, you were to earn a scaled score of 30 on English, 32 on Math, 28 on Reading, and 30 on Science, your ACT Composite score would be 30 (the average of all four scores, rounded to the nearest whole number).
When you get your score report, you will see your scaled scores in each section as well as your composite score. It’s worth noting that colleges generally pay most attention to the composite scores, but some may consider section scores as well, particularly if you're intending to major in a field that's related to a specific ACT section.
If you'd like an even more comprehensive overview of how your raw ACT score is equated to a scaled one, I'd check out this thorough blog post from CollegeVine: https://blog.collegevine.com/how-does-the-scoring-curve-work-for-the-act/. Best of luck with your testing journey!
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