I've heard a lot of different things about how the ACT is scored, especially regarding raw scores. Anyone got the lowdown on what exactly the raw score means, and how it's used to calculate your composite score?
Sure, I'm happy to explain! The raw score on the ACT is essentially the number of questions you answered correctly on each section (English, Math, Reading, and Science). So if you answered 75 questions correctly in English, your raw score for that section is 75.
Let's move on to how that translates into the familiar 1-36 scoring range. The ACT uses a conversion chart known as a scoring scale, which is slightly different for every test date. This is because the test makers try to adjust for slight variations in difficulty across different versions of the test. For example, if you answered 54 questions correctly in the Math section, your scaled score might be 30 for one test date, but 31 for another.
Finally, the composite score. It's the average of your scaled scores from the four sections, rounded to the nearest whole number. So, if your four section scores were 29 on English, 30 on Math, 34 on Reading, and 28 on Science, your composite score would be 30 [(29+30+34+28)/4 = 30.25, which rounds down to 30].
The raw score is not reported in your score report; the scaled score for each section, and the composite score, are what colleges see.
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