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What's a Good ACT Writing Score?

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For the ACT 2019-2020 reporting year, the average writing score is a 6.5 on a 12-point scale. The number comes from an ACT report on national norms , and represents roughly 2.8 million taken between 2017 and 2019. 

Do You Need the ACT Plus Writing?

Ever since the SAT evolved to include a written component, more and more colleges changed their policies to require ACT students to take the optional Writing Test (see the list of colleges that require ACT Plus Writing ). Hundreds of more colleges "recommend" the Writing Test, and if a selective college recommends something, you should probably do it. After all, strong writing skills are an essential part of college success.

As of March 2016, the SAT no longer includes a required essay section, and we're already seeing many colleges dropping the ACT writing exam as a requirement for admission. Time will tell if this trend continues. However, it is still a good idea to take the ACT Plus Wiring if 1) the colleges you're looking at recommend the test; and 2) you have solid writing skills.

There's no reason to take a recommended exam if you're likely to perform poorly on it. Unless the writing exam is required, take it only if you think it will strengthen your college application. Strong writing skills are essential to college success, so the score certainly can play a positive role in the admissions equation if you get a high score.

Average Scores on the Current 12-Point Writing Exam

An average score on the current ACT Writing Exam is a a 6.5. For highly selective colleges, you'll want a score of 8 or higher. Scores of 10, 11, and 12 truly stand out and highlight strong writing skills.

Unfortunately, for the past couple of years, almost no colleges report ACT writing scores to the Department of Education, so it's difficult to learn what score ranges are typical for different types of colleges. Later in this article, however, you'll see data from the pre-2015 12-point ACT writing exam, and those numbers can give you a pretty accurate sense of what scores will be competitive at different schools.

ACT Writing Scores by College

Because so few schools now require the ACT writing exam, the data is no longer reported to the Department of Education. The data below is historical—it's from pre-2015 when ACT used a 12-point scale and many colleges used the writing score as part of the admissions equation. Nevertheless, the numbers may be useful for seeing what writing scores were typical at different types of colleges and universities.

The data below shows the scores for the 25th and 75th percentile of matriculated students at certain colleges. In other words, half of all enrolled students scored somewhere between the lower and upper numbers. Again, keep in mind that this is  not  current data.

You can see that you don't need a perfect 12 to get into the most selective colleges in the country. In fact, a 9 or 10 puts you in a strong position even at schools like Harvard and MIT.

Keep in mind that your ACT Writing Test score is just a tiny part of your application. Your overall ACT composite score matters more than any individual section of the exam. A strong application also needs to include glowing letters or recommendation , a winning essay , and meaningful extracurricular involvement . Most important of all is a strong academic record .

• Good ACT Scores for College Admission
• Are Your SAT Scores Good Enough?
• 2019-20 ACT Score Release Dates
• Is Your AP Test Score Good Enough?
• Should I Retake the ACT?
• What's a Good SAT Subject Test Score?
• What Is the SAT?
• What is the ACT?
• Low ACT Scores?
• Should You Take the SAT Optional Essay Exam?
• AP English Language Score and College Credit Information
• What's a Good Chemistry SAT Subject Test Score in 2020?
• Colleges that Require the ACT Writing Test
• Low SAT Scores?
• Foreign Language Requirement for College Admissions
• ACT Format: What to Expect on the Exam

ACT Percentiles – How to Find ACT Score Percentiles

Your ACT percentile ranking tells you how you did compared to everyone else on the ACT test. ACT percentiles are, in some ways, even more important than your actual ACT score . Why? Because they provide an easy way to compare your performance on the ACT to other test-takers overall, providing you with important information for your ACT prep.

Read on for everything you need to know about ACT score percentiles.

How Are ACT Score Percentiles Calculated?

ACT percentiles are calculated by comparing one ACT score to the distribution of scores of all the students who took the ACT at a given time. On your ACT score report, the lowest percentile possible is the 1st percentile and the top percentile is the 99th percentile (it’s impossible to score at the 100th percentile because that would mean that your ACT score is higher than your score, which makes no sense!).

As a standardized test, the ACT is intentionally designed to get most students scoring at the 50th percentile mark. The following infographic might help you visualize the ACT score distribution:

ACT scores and their corresponding percentiles tend to stay the same year to year. So, for example, scoring a 32+ typically means you did better than 97% of test-takers and scoring a 26 typically means that you did better than 82% of test-takers. (Note that these scores don’t mean that you scored a 97% or a 82%, respectively, on the test.)  

Historical ACT Composite Score Percentiles

These historical ACT percentiles are provided by ACT.org .

*NOTE: This chart represents the cumulative percentages rather than percentile scores. For this reason, it shows some ACT scores corresponding with 100, whereas an individual with scores at those levels would be scoring at the 99th percentile.

How to Find Your ACT Score Percentile

On your ACT score report , you’ll see your ACT score breakdown represented by several percentile scores—you’ll not only be able to see your composite percentile, percentiles for each subject area subscore, and percentiles for STEM and ELA subscores, but you’ll also see these percentiles in terms of your U.S. rank and your state rank.

Here’s a snippet from a model ACT score report:  

If you haven’t taken the ACT yet and you’re wondering where your practice test scores fall in the ACT distribution, you would first need to make sure that your raw score is converted to your scaled score for each subject area (except for the ACT Writing Test) as well as the composite score.

Then, you can use the below ACT percentile chart to match all five scores to their corresponding percentiles, based on the most recently-released data . (To score your essay and determine your ACT writing score percentile, check out this post about what makes a good ACT writing score .)

ACT Percentiles for Composite Score and Subscores

This ACT percentiles information is provided by ACT.org .

*This chart represents the cumulative percentages rather than percentile scores. If any of your scores correspond with 100, you would be at the 99th percentile.

What Is a Good ACT Percentile?

While it may be useful to know your ACT percentile as determined by the national or statewide distribution of scores, it’s not necessarily the best tool to determine what a good ACT percentile might be for you.

You may think that scoring at the 90th percentile nationally at least means that you have a competitive score for any school in the country (and to be fair, that would be the case for the vast majority of colleges and universities).

But for elite schools (where the average ACT score is around 33), scoring even at the 95th percentile might not be enough, especially if the rest of your application has some flaws. On the flip side, scoring below the 90th percentile mark could still allow you to be a great candidate at top state universities around the country.

This is because for pretty much any school in the U.S., a good ACT score percentile is anywhere in the middle 50% (25th percentile-75th percentile) of the score distribution of accepted students specifically at the schools you’re interested in —and that differs notably from school to school.

For example, at the prestigious University of Chicago , their 25th percentile score of accepted students is 34 while their 75th percentile is 35. Meanwhile, at the University of Texas-Austin , a phenomenal school in its own right, their middle 50% scores range from 27 to 33 (ACT test scores were not a required component for application to the Class of 2025).

While schools don’t release their own ACT score percentile charts, they do release the score range of their middle 50% of students. You can check out more score ranges of the top 100 U.S. universities in our post about ACT scores . Use this data to help you figure out the middle 50% ranges of your target schools—or better yet, the scores you need to go beyond the 75th percentile in order to maximize your chances of getting in.

How Do Colleges Use ACT Percentiles?

For college admissions offices, your ACT percentile is probably not as important as your ACT score. This is because the school’s ACT score range (as determined by the middle 50% at their school) is the information that admissions officers have handy; so, they don’t actually need to calculate your ACT percentile to see how your score falls into the middle 50% score range.

That being said, your national ACT percentile can provide an easy way of determining how you stack up to other students applying. Because applicants send in scores from the ACT and SAT, college admissions teams need some way to compare these scores. So for admissions officers who don’t have the ACT to SAT score conversion memorized (a.k.a. most of them!), they are likely to take notice of your percentile rank as well.

How to Use ACT Score Percentiles to Improve Your Score

If you have plans to retake the ACT , the ACT percentiles provide valuable perspective to help you be strategic with your test prep: how much you might need to study and which subject areas take higher priority.

Let’s take a look at our model score report once more:  

With just a cursory look at the scores, you can see that this student is stronger at the STEM subjects than the ELA subjects. But the percentiles better show the magnitude of difference between these two areas and provide more of a sense of urgency to focus on ELA.

Although it is certainly fine to be stronger in one subject than another, you don’t want any one subject to drag down your score or percentile too much. Colleges would use this information to note that you are weak in certain areas.

Looking at this student’s scores alone can also make it seem like they might have to spend roughly the same amount of time studying for Reading and English. Or that the student might need to spend more time bringing up their Math score to be more on par with their Science score. When looking at the percentiles, however, you can see how the difference between the student’s performance on English and Reading is significant and that they should prioritize studying for Reading before other tests.

The state rank also provides some important perspective when it comes to prioritizing what to study for the ACT retake . If you’re only applying to public schools in your state, for example, your state percentile rank might give you a better sense of your competition than the national rank.

If your state rank is better than your national rank, you may be able to somewhat reduce the pressure to do well on a retake; conversely, if your state rank is worse than your national rank, you’d have to prepare yourself to hit the books.

In either case, you’d still want to dedicate as much time as possible to studying because the higher the ACT score, the more competitive of an applicant you’ll be.

Key Takeaway

Hopefully, after reading this post, you’ll have a better understanding of ACT percentiles and the scores you should aim for (if you haven’t taken the ACT yet). If you have, then hopefully you have a better sense of whether you’re on track with your current ACT percentile or if you need to aim higher.

If it’s the latter, we have plenty of resources to help you to improve your ACT score! Our blog is full of free resources, such as how to improve your ACT score by 10 points or how to structure your ACT study schedule .

For even more structured support and practice, you can check out our Magoosh ACT app , which is guaranteed to increase your score by 4 points .

Wherever you may be on your ACT journey, we at Magoosh wish you all the best!

As one of Magoosh’s Blog Editors, Anika relies on her nearly 20 years in education and youth leadership spaces to produce empowering, student-centered content across Magoosh’s blogs. Anika has a BA from Grinnell College and an MPP from Harvard University. Her experience includes serving two years as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Malaysia, an SAT tutor for Kaplan, and currently, as the Executive Director of Youth Activism Project , a nonprofit that she co-founded when she was 12 years old. Anika’s work has been featured in The Washington Post , The Boston Globe , and Yahoo! Money . She has also spoken at panels and given presentations at New York University and Harvard University . If you’d like to keep up with Anika, you can check out her LinkedIn , Instagram , Twitter , and personal website .

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What's a Good ACT Score?

Applicants can gauge ACT scores based on what's needed for admission at their target colleges, experts say.

What's a Good ACT Score?

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According to data from the ACT organization, the national average composite ACT score was 20.6 for the class of 2020.

When determining what makes for a good ACT score, test-takers have to ask another question: "Good enough for whom, exactly?"

Like various other factors on a college application, the criteria for what makes a good test score are largely dependent on what schools want. A good ACT score at one school may fall below the mark at another based on admissions standards set by individual colleges.

"I think it varies considerably, depending on what schools you're targeting, and also what their current position is on testing, which seems to be quite a fluid situation these days," says Jill Madenberg, principal at Madenberg College Consulting in New York.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted many colleges to go test-optional , meaning students can decide whether to submit ACT and SAT scores. Other colleges have gone test-blind, meaning they won't even look at scores submitted as part of applications. Many colleges made such moves after a string of cancellations by testing companies made it difficult for students to take these standardized exams.

The composite score on the ACT ranges from 1 to 36. The national average composite score was 20.6 for the class of 2020, per recent data from the ACT organization. This number marks a slight dip from the prior year, when the composite score averaged 20.7 for the class of 2019.

Determine a Good ACT Score for College Admissions

The national average may be down, but what ultimately is a good ACT score?

"Quite simply, there's no such thing as a good or bad score," Tony Le, a test prep expert at Magoosh, a California-based online test prep company, wrote in an email. "It's relative to the school that you are applying to & the context of the admissions process. The first place to look is the college's range of scores & you'll want to stay within this range to stay competitive."

But one ACT score that some college counseling professionals point to as the high water mark for selective institutions is a 34.

"We get a lot of students aiming for the Ivy League , and for the Ivies, it's a 34 that seems to be the magic number that students feel will give them their best shot," says Shahar Link, owner and founder of North Carolina-based Mindspire Tutoring and Test Prep.

Madenberg adds that "achieving a 34 or higher will get your application read at pretty much any school in America."

Here's a look at the 25th and 75th ACT score percentiles for newly enrolled students in fall 2019 at the top National Universities , as ranked by U.S. News.

But students can and do get into many schools with much lower scores. After all, testing is only one part of an application, and colleges also consider letters of recommendations , high school GPA and admissions essays , among other factors.

Ultimately, schools' benchmarks vary. The national average ACT score for 2019 reported by nearly 340 ranked National Universities to U.S. News in an annual survey was 25.5.

Regarding ACT scores, experts advise students to look at the 50th percentile of students admitted in the most recent freshman class to know what ACT scores individual colleges value. Scoring in the 50th percentile means a test-taker scored equal to or higher than 50% of his or her peers. Theoretically, the higher the percentile rank the better the odds of admission at that school.

Students can use this benchmark as a rule of thumb, experts say. Being above the 50th percentile is a good sign. Although being below doesn't automatically disqualify students, it may mean that a school is a reach based on their ACT scores. In such cases, students may want to consider not submitting scores if that college is test-optional because submitting scores is unlikely to help their application.

Madenberg encourages students to personalize applications for each college according to where they landed in the 50th percentile range, so that they're sending scores to schools where they hit that target. "You don't have to do the same thing for every college," she says. "If you're applying to eight colleges , you can submit your scores to two or three of them and not the others."

And while many colleges are test-optional, submitting a score can still be worthwhile.

"If you submit a strong score, it's going to help you," Link says. "Or at least it definitely won't hurt you."

Similarly, Le suggests fewer students may take standardized exams as they remain optional at many schools, which means taking a test and submitting a score may offer another data point to evaluate an applicant and may help him or her stand out in the admissions process.

As for test-blind schools, there's no point in sending exam results to institutions that aren't even going to look at them as part of the admissions process or for determining scholarships, experts say.

The table below shows a breakdown of ACT composite scores by percentile based on 2020-2021 exam results, per the most recent ACT data.

How to Improve Your ACT Score

Performing well on the ACT often starts with taking a practice exam so students can see where they stand and what needs improvement.

ACT practice tests can be a good way for students to familiarize themselves with the content and can serve as a diagnostic exam. Once students have identified their weak spots, they can work toward improving in those areas.

Test prep and college counseling experts generally encourage students to take the ACT at least twice. Nearly half of the students who take the ACT end up taking the exam more than once and typically improve their score, says Erika Tyler-John, ACT curriculum manager at Magoosh.

"One of the best things you can do to ensure your retake goes well is to learn as much as you can from your first attempt. Did you run out of time on any sections? Were there any question types you struggled with in particular? Did you experience more test anxiety than you do in your practice tests? Use your retake as an opportunity to address the things that impacted you (and your score) most on test day," Tyler-John wrote in an email.

She also encourages students to prioritize learning from their mistakes by investing time in the areas where they struggle.

"A great idea is to try to never make the same mistake twice – so once you make a mistake, dig into it to figure out what you did, why you did it, and how to recognize and fix it in a different problem," Tyler-John says.

In dealing with test anxiety , Madenberg encourages students to recognize that the ACT is just one of many exams they'll likely take in their high school career and to consider it "another day on the job." She also encourages students to recognize that the ACT score is just one of many factors that colleges consider and not a complete picture of an applicant.

"Colleges recognize that a test score is only a few hours of your time on one day," Madenberg says, "and it is not reflective or encompassing – good or bad – of who you are."

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By submitting my email address. i certify that i am 13 years of age or older, agree to recieve marketing email messages from the princeton review, and agree to terms of use., act scoring chart: calculate your score.

ACT scoring doesn't have to be a mystery.  Learn how the answers you get right on the ACT translate to your overall score. We'll explain the ACT grading scale and show you a sample ACT score chart. 

Is the ACT scored on a curve?

Best 382 Colleges 2018 Edition on TODAY Show

ACT Tips: Pacing and Personal Order of Difficulty

On each  section of the ACT , the number of correct answers converts to a scaled score of 1–36. ACT works hard to adjust the grading scale of each test at each administration as necessary to make all scaled scores comparable, smoothing out any differences in level of difficulty across test dates.

There is no truth to any one ACT test date being “easier” than the others, but you can expect to see slight variations in the scale from test to test.

Calculate Your ACT Score

Act raw score vs scale score.

Here’s how ACT scoring works. You’re given a point for every question you get right (there’s no penalty or point deduction for wrong answers). The total number of questions you get right on each test (English, Math, Reading, and Science) equals your raw score . Your raw score for each test is then converted into a scale score (1–36).  

Composite Score

Your composite score, or overall ACT score, is the average of your scores on each test. Add up your English, Math, Reading, and Science scores and divide by 4. (Round to the nearest whole number). Learn more about what your ACT scores mean .

Sample ACT Scoring Chart

This is a sample ACT raw score conversion grid from the free test ACT makes available on its website. Keep in mind, the ACT score chart for each test administration is different, so this one should be used only as an example.

Read More: What's a Good ACT Score?

How is the ACT Writing Test scored?

The writing test score is a little more complicated. If you take the ACT Plus Writing (which will ask you to write an essay), your writing will be evaluated by two readers. Both readers score your essay on a scale of 1–6 in four different areas (learn more about the ACT essay here ). The ACT essay score will appear on your score report on a scale from 2-12. ACT also reports an English Language Arts (ELA) score out of 36, which represents your overall performance on the English, reading, and writing tests, but this value is NOT included in your ACT Composite Score calculation. No ELA score is reported if you do not choose to take the ACT With Essay.

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ACT Prep Courses & Tutoring

ACT Score Percentiles

October 27, 2018

There are a variety of ways to wrap your head around your admissions competition: study hard, take the exam more than once, try to stick out in your interview process. Of course, your ACT score is a primary means of differentiating yourself from others since it is, well, a definite score. Standardized tests are used to not only evaluate college readiness, but also to help streamline the application process, in general. Yes, you are competing for a spot with your GPA, but you're also doing so with your ACT score, as well. How well do you understand the statistics surrounding ACT percentiles? Schools typically use them in the 25th and 75th categories, accepting students from both, depending on other factors from their overall application. Thankfully, most schools publish percentile data, but we're going to delve into a bit of it in this article to give you further insight and understanding. Hopefully, this paints a picture of how a particular school organizes applications and determines admissions. While we can't get inside the crevices of their mind, we can attempt to reflect on the data widely available to everyone.

ACT: The Basics

The format of the ACT is in four mandatory sections: English, Math, Reading, and Science. The length of the ACT lasts two hours and 55 minutes; with the optional writing section, it lasts three hours and 35 minutes. The test, as a whole, is graded on a scale of 1-36. Below is a chart detailing ACT specifics in terms of question length and allotted time: 

It's important to note that the 20-minute Experimental section is given only to some test-takers. You are also allowed two breaks: a ten-minute one between the Math and Reading sections, and a five-minute break between the Experimental and Writing portion.

ACT: General Data

In order to best understand the relationship with ACT percentiles that relate to students and schools, it's important to look at recent 2017 statistics published by ACT.org, as it pertains to national averages.

Below is also a 2017 study recently published about ACT scores and how they correlate to gender:

Naturally, your aim as a test-taker applying to an elite school is to surpass national averages—as well as school averages. Percentiles help make sense of this data, as well as how you determine your chances against your fellow applicants.

ACT: Overview of Percentiles

The following percentile chart is widely available from ACT.org, the makers of the ACT. As you can see, percentiles have increased the last three years compared to 2013-2015. This could be partly due to the fact that the ACT has become a more popular exam, with far more test-takers than its rival exam, the SAT. However, hopefully, this chart gives you an idea of what admissions counselors are talking about when referring to ACT percentile data.

 Having the benefit of this data to see how these scores and percentiles have changed over time is an important insight when taking into account the changing nature and difficulty level of the ACT—not to mention the competition you face with other students also sitting for it, as well.

The following table is the most recent data regarding 2017-2018 percentile statistics from ACT.org.

ACT: School-Specific Percentiles

Naturally, when looking at ACT percentiles, you want to examine how your own score fits into the average percentiles at your chosen school. While your ACT score is not the only determining factor for admission, it plays greatly into the minds of the admissions committee. Below is a chart about top schools and their 25th and 75th percentiles, published by Niche.com, an educational services site that publishes standardized testing data:

The Takeaway

All in all, finding the right course of study is your best bet to make it into a higher percentile to your chosen school. Naturally, with higher percentiles comes the understanding you may need to take the ACT more than once. If your particular college or undergraduate university requests all of your ACT scores and not just your highest, make note of that before scheduling your initial test day. Keep in mind there are other important factors that go into your college admissions package, but your ACT score is perhaps one of the most important.

Calculate for all schools

Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, understanding act scores: percentiles.

Hey guys, just wondering if anyone here knows how ACT scores correspond with percentiles? I want to get a better understanding of where I stand compared to others. Thanks in advance!

Hey there! Understanding percentiles can be quite useful in knowing where you stand compared to other test-takers. ACT scores use percentiles to show how well you performed relative to others who took the test. For example, if your score is in the 90th percentile, it means you scored equal to or better than 90% of the test-takers. Likewise, if you're in the 50th percentile, you scored better than half of the test-takers.

Here's a rough breakdown of ACT scores and their corresponding percentiles to give you a general idea:

- 36: 99+ percentile (99.9%)

- 35: 99th percentile

- 34: 99th percentile

- 33: 98th percentile

- 32: 97th percentile

- 31: 96th percentile

- 30: 94th percentile

- 29: 92nd percentile

- 28: 89th percentile

- 27: 86th percentile

- 26: 81st percentile

- 25: 76th percentile

- 24: 71st percentile

- 23: 65th percentile

- 22: 59th percentile

- 21: 53rd percentile

- 20: 47th percentile

Keep in mind these percentiles can change slightly from year to year, but they’re unlikely to fluctuate too drastically. You can visit the official ACT website for the most recent percentile charts. This information can help you set goals for your score and determine your competitiveness at certain colleges and universities. Just remember that different colleges have different standards for ACT scores—while the most selective institutions will expect you to be in a percentile in the high 90s, plenty of excellent schools are open to students who are in lower percentiles.

Additionally, while test scores are one aspect of college admissions, factors like GPA, extracurriculars, essays, and recommendation letters are also important in the holistic review process. So, even if you’re in the 99th percentile, don’t neglect these other areas, whereas if you didn’t do as well as you’d hoped on the ACT, remember that having notable strengths in other areas of your profile can help compensate for that. Good luck!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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Jen Forbus turned 50 this year. She is in good health and says her life has only gotten better as she has grown older. Forbus resides in Lorain, Ohio, not far from Cleveland; she is single and has no children, but her parents and sisters are nearby. She works, remotely, as an editorial supervisor for an educational publishing company, a job that she loves. She is on track to pay off her mortgage in the next 10 years, and having recently made her last car payment, she is otherwise debt-free. By almost any measure, Forbus is middle class.

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Still, she worries about her future. Forbus would like to stop working when she is 65. She has no big retirement dreams — she is not planning to move to Florida or to take extravagant vacations. She hopes to spend her later years enjoying family and friends and pursuing different hobbies. But she knows that she hasn’t set aside enough money to ensure that she can realize even this modest ambition.

A former high school teacher, Forbus says she has around $200,000 in total savings. She earns a high five-figure salary and contributes 9 percent of it to the 401(k) plan that she has through her employer. The company also makes a matching contribution that is equivalent to 5 percent of her salary. A widely accepted rule of thumb among personal-finance experts is that your retirement income needs to be close to 80 percent of what you earned before retiring if you hope to maintain your lifestyle. Forbus figures that she can retire comfortably on around $1 million, although if her house is paid off, she might be able to get by with a bit less. She is not factoring Social Security benefits into her calculations. “I feel like it’s too uncertain and not something I can depend on,” she says.

But even if the stock market delivers blockbuster returns over the next 15 years, her goal is going to be difficult to reach — and this assumes that she doesn’t have a catastrophic setback, like losing her job or suffering a debilitating illness.

She also knows that markets don’t always go up. During the 2008 global financial crisis, her 401(k) lost a third of its value, which was a scarring experience. From the extensive research that she has done, Forbus has become a fairly savvy investor; she’s familiar with all of the major funds and has 60 percent of her money in stocks and the rest in fixed income, which is generally the recommended ratio for people who are some years away from retiring. Still, Forbus would prefer that her retirement prospects weren’t so dependent on her own investing acumen. “It makes me very nervous,” she concedes. She and her friends speak with envy of the pensions that their parents and grandparents had. “I wish that were an option for us,” she says.

The sentiment is understandable. With pensions, otherwise known as defined-benefit plans, your employer invests on your behalf, and you are promised a fixed monthly income upon retirement. With 401(k)s, which are named after a section of the tax code, you choose from investment options that your company gives you, and there is no guarantee of what you will get back, only limits on what you can put in. This is why they are known as defined-contribution plans. Pensions still exist but mainly for unionized jobs. In the private sector, they have largely been replaced by 401(k)s, which came along in the early 1980s. Generally, contributions to 401(k)s are pretax dollars — you pay income tax when you withdraw the money — and these savings vehicles have been a bonanza for a lot of Americans.

Not all companies offer 401(k)s, however, and millions of private-sector employees lack access to workplace retirement plans. Availability is just one problem; contributing is another. Many people who have 401(k)s put little if any money into their accounts. With Americans now aging out of the work force in record numbers — according to the Alliance for Lifetime Income, a nonprofit founded by a group of financial-services companies, 4.1 million people will turn 65 this year, part of what the AARP and others have called the “silver tsunami” — the holes in the retirement system are becoming starkly apparent. U.S. Census Bureau data indicates that in 2017 49 percent of Americans ages 55 to 66 had “no personal retirement savings.”

The savings shortfall is no surprise to Teresa Ghilarducci, an economist at the New School in New York. She has long predicted that the shift to 401(k)s would leave vast numbers of Americans without enough money to retire on, reducing many of them to poverty or forcing them to continue working into their late 60s and beyond. That so many people still do not have 401(k)s or find themselves, like Jen Forbus, in such tenuous circumstances when they do, is proof that what she refers to as this “40-year experiment with do-it-yourself pensions” has been “an utter failure.”

It certainly appears to be failing a large segment of the working population, and while Ghilarducci has been making that case for years, more and more people are now coming around to her view. Her latest book, “Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy,” which was published in March, is drawing a lot of attention: She has been interviewed on NPR and C-SPAN and has testified on Capitol Hill.

It is no longer just fellow progressives who are receptive to her message. Ghilarducci used to be an object of scorn on the right, once drawing the megaphonic wrath of Rush Limbaugh. Today, though, even some conservatives admit that her assessment of the retirement system is basically correct. Indeed, Kevin Hassett, who was a senior economic adviser to President Trump, teamed up with Ghilarducci not long ago to devise a plan that would help low- and middle-income Americans save more for retirement. Their proposal is the basis for legislation currently before Congress.

And Ghilarducci recently found her critique being echoed by one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street. In his annual letter to investors, Larry Fink , the chairman and chief executive of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset-management companies, wrote that the United States was facing a retirement crisis due in no small part to self-directed retirement financing. Fink said that for most Americans, replacing defined-benefit plans with defined-contribution plans had been “a shift from financial certainly to financial uncertainty” and suggested that it was time to abandon the “you’re on your own” approach.

While that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, it seems fair to ask whether the country as a whole has been well served by the 401(k) revolution. The main beneficiaries have been higher-income workers; instead of making an economically secure retirement possible for more people, 401(k)s have arguably become another driver of the inequality that is a defining feature of American life.

When it comes to generating wealth, 401(k)s have been an extraordinary success. The Investment Company Institute, a financial-industry trade group, calculates that the roughly 700,000 401(k) plans now in existence hold more than $7 trillion in assets. But the gains have gone primarily to those who were already at or near the top. According to the Federal Reserve, the value of the median retirement-saving account for households in the 90th to 100th income percentile has more than quintupled during the last 30 years and is currently more than $500,000. In one sense, it is not surprising that the affluent have profited to this degree from 401(k)s: The more money you can invest, the more money you stand to make.

In 2024, annual pretax contributions for employees are capped at $23,000, but with an employer match and possibly also an after-tax contribution (which is permitted under some plans), the maximum can reach $69,000. Workers 50 and over are also allowed to kick in an additional $7,500, potentially pushing the total to $76,500. Needless to say, only a sliver of the U.S. work force can contribute anything like that to their 401(k)s.

The withdrawal rules have evolved in a way that also favors high earners. You are generally not supposed to begin taking money from a 401(k) before you are 59½; doing so could incur a 10 percent penalty (on top of the income-tax hit). What’s more, you can now put off withdrawing money until age 73; previously, you had to begin drawing down 401(k)s by 70½. Those extra years are an added tax benefit for retirees who are in no rush to tap their 401(k)s.

People in lower-income brackets may have also made money from 401(k)s but hardly enough to retire on with Social Security. In 2022, the median retirement account for households in the 20th through 39th percentile held just $20,000. For this segment of the working population, 401(k)s sometimes end up serving a very different purpose. They become a source of emergency funds, not retirement income. But then, for many of these people, retirement seems like an impossibility.

Laura Gendreau directs a program called Stand by Me, a joint venture between the United Way of Delaware and the state government that provides free financial counseling. She says that when she asks clients if they are putting aside any money for retirement, they often look at her in disbelief: “They say, ‘How do you expect me to save for retirement when I’m living paycheck to paycheck?’” She and her colleagues try to identify expenditures that can be eliminated or reduced so that people can start saving at least a small portion of what they earn. But she says that some clients are having such a hard time just getting by that they can’t fathom being able to retire. Sometimes it does not even occur to them to look into whether their employers offer 401(k)s. “They have no idea,” Gendreau says.

Ghilarducci has been hearing this sort of thing for years. Her career in academia began around the time that 401(k)s first emerged, and from the start, she regarded these savings plans with skepticism. For one thing, she feared that a lot of people would never have access to them. But she also felt that 401(k)s were unsuitable for lower-income Americans, who often struggled to save money or who might not have either the time or the knowledge to manage their own investments. In her judgment, the offloading of retirement risk onto workers was worse than just an economic misstep — it represented a betrayal of the social contract.

Ghilarducci, who is 66, has the unusual distinction of being a high school dropout with a Ph.D. in economics. She also has firsthand experience of economic hardship, and her working-class roots have shaped her worldview. She was raised by a single mother in Roseville, Calif., and money was always tight. Despite a turbulent home life, she excelled academically and was able to take advantage of a program that allowed California students with strong grades and test scores to attend schools within the California university system without charge.

After being accepted at the University of California, San Diego, she stopped going to high school — it bored her — and never graduated. A year later, she transferred to the University of California, Berkeley. Neither university knew that she had not completed high school. “They didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell,” she says with a laugh. She majored in economics at Berkeley and also obtained her doctorate there. She then taught at the University of Notre Dame for 25 years (she joined the faculty of the New School in 2008). During that time, she acquired a national reputation for her expertise on retirement.

In 2008, Ghilarducci proposed replacing 401(k)s with “guaranteed retirement accounts,” a program that would combine mandatory individual and employer contributions with tax credits and that would guarantee at least a 3 percent annual return, adjusted for inflation. Her plan drew the wrath of voices on the right — the conservative pundit James Pethokoukis called her “the most dangerous woman in America.”

But her timing proved to be apt: That year, the global financial crisis imperiled the retirement plans of millions of Americans. Ghilarducci suggested that if the government was going to bail out the banks, it also had an obligation to help people whose 401(k)s had tanked. Her idea inflamed the right: Rush Limbaugh attacked her during his daily radio show, which brought her a wave of hate mail.

Her hostility to 401(k)s is partly anchored in a belief that when it comes to retirement, the country was on a better path in the past. In the 1950s and 1960s, many Americans could count on pensions and Social Security to provide them with a decent retirement. It was a different era, of course — back then, men (and it was almost always men) often spent their entire careers with the same companies. And even at their peak, pensions were not available to everyone; only around half of all employees ever had one. Still, in Ghilarducci’s view, it was a time when the United States put more emphasis on the interests of working-class Americans, including ensuring that they could retire with some degree of economic security.

She portrays the move to defined contribution retirement plans as part of the sharp rightward turn that the United States took under President Ronald Reagan, when the notion of individual responsibility became economic dogma — what the Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker has called “the great risk shift.” The downside of this shift was laid bare by the great recession. Many older Americans lost their savings and were forced to scavenge for work.

This was the subject of the journalist Jessica Bruder’s book “Nomadland,” for which Ghilarducci was interviewed and that was the basis for the Oscar-winning film of the same title. To Ghilarducci, the portraits in “Nomadland” — of lives upended, of the indignity of being old and having to scramble for food and shelter — presaged the insecure future that awaited millions of other older Americans. And Ghilarducci believes that with record numbers of people now reaching retirement age, that grim future is arriving.

Her new book makes a powerful case for why all working people deserve a comfortable, dignified retirement and why, for so many Americans, the current retirement system is incapable of providing that. Her nationwide book tour has had the feel of a victory lap, although the vindication she can plausibly claim is no cause for celebration. “It’s the pinnacle of my career because what I told people would happen is happening,” she says. “So it’s a big told-you-so, and that told-you-so is on the backs of around 40 million middle-class workers who will be poor or near-poor elders.”

Ghilarducci finds it outrageous that Americans who don’t have enough money set aside for retirement are now being told that the solution to their financial woes is to just keep working. Forcing senior citizens to stay on the job is cruel, she says, and especially so if it involves physically demanding labor. She has observed that older workers often have “a shame hunch” — their body language suggests embarrassment. They are spending their last years in quiet humiliation.

To Ghilarducci, all of this represents a retreat from the ideals that fueled America’s prosperity and made the United States a beacon of opportunity. As she writes in her book, “A signature achievement of the postwar period — the democratization of who has control over the pace and content of their time after a lifetime of work — is being reversed.”

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, many companies, in addition to providing their employees with pensions, offered tax-deferred profit-sharing programs, which were available mostly to executives. But there was a lot of murkiness surrounding these defined-contribution plans — and a lot of concern that the I.R.S. might eventually ban them. When Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1978, it included an addition to the Internal Revenue Code that was intended to provide greater clarity about how these plans were to be structured and who could participate. The provision, which took effect in 1980, was called Section 401(k). According to a 2014 Bloomberg article, the staff members who drafted it thought it was a minor regulatory tweak, of no particular consequence. One former senior congressional aide was quoted as saying it was “an insignificant provision in a very large bill. It took on a life of its own afterwards.”

That’s because Ted Benna saw something in that new section of the Internal Revenue Code that had eluded the people who wrote it. Benna, a retirement-benefits consultant, was in his suburban Philadelphia office on a Saturday afternoon in 1979, trying to figure out how to devise a deferred-compensation plan for one of his firm’s clients, a local bank. At the time, the top marginal tax rate was 70 percent, and the bank wanted to see if there was a way to award bonuses to its executives that could limit their tax bill.

As Benna read the provisions of section 401(k), a solution dawned on him: The language seemed to indicate that he could create a plan in which the bonuses were put in a tax-deferred retirement plan. There was a catch, though. Under the terms of 401(k), this could be done only if rank-and-file employees participated in the plan. Benna knew that getting them to agree to set aside some of their pay would not be easy, so he came up with a sweetener — he proposed that the bank would partly match the contributions of its employees.

The bank balked at Benna’s proposal; it was concerned that regulators would rule the scheme illegal. Benna’s own firm decided to implement the idea, however, and it proved wildly popular with the company’s 50 or so employees. Benna and his colleagues called the plan “cash-op,” but the name never caught on, and instead came to be known as the 401(k). The new savings vehicle eventually did run into government resistance, when the Reagan administration, concerned about the lost tax revenues, tried to eliminate 401(k)s in 1986 — this notwithstanding the fact that 401(k)s, with their promise of individual empowerment, seemed emblematic of the so-called Reagan Revolution. But by then it was too late. A number of companies were already offering 401(k)s to their employees, and the financial industry, eyeing a lucrative new revenue stream, threw its lobbying muscle behind these investment plans.

Benna is 82 now, and I recently met with him in York, Pa. (He was there visiting family; he lives near Williamsport, Pa.) He is still working. He told me that his religious faith had compelled him to put off his own retirement. “The Creator didn’t create us to spend 30 years doing nothing,” he said. A tall, unassuming man, Benna suggested that we meet at the Cracker Barrel in York. There, over iced tea and coffee, we talked about the trillion-dollar business that resulted from his close reading of section 401(k). Benna had been quoted in the past voicing some misgivings about these savings plans. He told the magazine Smart Money in 2011, for instance, that he had given rise to a “monster.”

But he explained to me that the remorse he expressed had nothing to do with 401(k)s themselves, which he said had helped convert millions of Americans from “spenders into savers.” Rather, what he regretted was the complexity of many plans — he thought a lot of employees were overwhelmed by all the investment options — and the fact that the financial-services industry profited from them to the degree that it did. Benna said that the advent of the 401(k) turned the mutual-fund industry into the colossus that it is today and that too many fund managers charged what he considers unjustifiably high fees. “Over the life of an investment, it is a real hit — it is gigantic,” he says.

Yet Benna rejects the idea that 401(k)s took the country in the wrong direction. He contends that traditional pensions were doomed with or without 401(k)s. He recalls visiting Bethlehem Steel in the 1980s to talk about 401(k)s. “I told them that they had to start helping their employees save for retirement, and their H.R. person said, ‘Our employees don’t need to do that because we take care of them for life.’ And what happened to that?” (Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and the government had to fulfill its pension obligations.) Likewise, he doesn’t think it is true that 401(k)s have really only benefited the well-off. He mentioned his brother-in-law, who lived in York and worked as a supervisor at Caterpillar, the construction-equipment manufacturer. When Caterpillar announced in 1996 that it was relocating its York plant to Illinois, he chose to take early retirement rather than uproot his family. “He told me that was only possible because of his 401(k),” Benna said. But he conceded that too many people are being let down by the retirement system and that something needs to be done to help them save for their later years.

Benna is one of a number of experts who believe that mandates will ultimately be needed to improve retirement financing — that the voluntary approach, in which companies decide whether they want to sponsor 401(k)s and employees decide whether they wish to participate, is leaving too many gaps. He thinks all companies above a certain size should have to offer employees 401(k)s or alternative retirement-savings options. (Starting next year, employers that establish new 401(k) plans will be required to automatically enroll workers in those plans. There is still no obligation, however, to actually provide the plans themselves.)

Other countries go further. Australia’s Superannuation Guarantee requires companies to contribute the equivalent of 11 percent of an employee’s monthly pay to an investment account that is controlled by the worker, who can also put in additional money. The “Super,” as it is known, includes full-time and part-time workers and has proved to be enormously successful. With its relatively small population — just 27 million — Australia now has the world’s fourth-highest per capita contributions to a pension system, and almost 80 percent of its work force is covered. BlackRock’s Larry Fink says that “Australia’s experience with Supers could be a good model for American policymakers to study and build on.”

The desire to give less affluent Americans the chance to build a decent nest egg is one that is shared across ideological lines. That in itself is a big change from, say, the debate about health care reform, which bitterly divided liberals and conservatives. (It is worth recalling that the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010 without a single Republican vote.) In fact, concern about the retirement-savings shortfall has become a rare source of bipartisan cooperation in Washington, and it has also yielded some unlikely alliances.

A few years ago, Kevin Hassett, who was chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers for a portion of Donald Trump’s presidency, became familiar with Ghilarducci’s work and sent her, unsolicited, the draft of a paper he was writing about the retirement-savings gap. She replied enthusiastically, and he suggested that she write the paper with him. Their partnership eventually yielded a plan for helping lower- and middle-income Americans save for retirement.

The idea they hatched was to make the Thrift Savings Plan, a government-sponsored retirement program for federal employees and members of the uniformed services, open to all Americans. T.S.P., which in total assets is the largest defined-contribution program in the country, includes automatic enrollment and matching contributions from the government. A number of states now offer retirement-savings plans for people whose employers don’t provide 401(k)s, but none of these include matching contributions, which many experts believe are an important incentive for getting workers to set aside a portion of their own salaries.

Ghilarducci and Hassett think that only a federal program in which savings accounts of eligible workers are topped up with government money will significantly increase the participation and savings rates of low-income Americans. Their proposal is the basis for the Retirement Savings for Americans Act, a bill recently introduced by the U.S. senators John Hickenlooper and Thom Tillis and the U.S. representatives Terri Sewell and Lloyd Smucker. Two are Democrats; two are Republicans.

This past January, another bipartisan collaboration — between Alicia Munnell, who was an economist in the Clinton administration and who now serves as the director of Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, and Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank — published a paper calling for a reduction or an end to the 401(k) tax benefit.

Their research showed that it had not led to more participation in the program nor had it significantly increased the amount that Americans in the aggregate were saving for retirement. It was mostly just a giveaway to upper-income investors and a costly one at that. They estimated that it deprived the Treasury of almost $200 billion in revenue annually. They proposed reducing or even ending the tax-deferred status of 401(k)s and using the added revenue to shore up Social Security.

When I spoke to Biggs, he emphasized that he was not against 401(k)s. On balance, he thinks that they have worked well, and he also says that some of the criticism aimed at them is no longer valid. For instance, the do-it-yourself aspect is overstated: Most plans, for instance, now offer target-date funds, which automatically adjust your asset allocation depending on your age and goals, freeing you from having to continuously readjust your portfolio yourself. He acknowledges that rescinding the tax preferences could be tricky politically: The people who have chiefly benefited from them are also the people who write checks to campaigns. But he is confident that Americans can ultimately be persuaded to give up the tax advantages. “If we say to people, ‘Look, we can slash your Social Security benefits or increase your Social Security taxes, or we can reduce this useless subsidy that goes to rich people who don’t need the money’ — well, that’s a little more compelling.”

Hassett told me that his work with Ghilarducci does not represent any softening of his faith in the free market. Quite the opposite: He sees government intervention to boost retirement savings as a necessary step to preserving American capitalism. Hassett has been concerned for some time that the country is drifting toward socialism — the subject of his most recent book — and part of the reason is that too many Americans are economically marginalized and have come to feel that the system doesn’t work to their benefit.

“They feel disconnected, and they are disconnected,” Hassett says. Having the government help them save for retirement would be prudent. “It would give them more of a stake in the success of the free-enterprise system,” he says. “I think it’s important for long-run political stability that everybody gets a stake.”

Jen Forbus is not economically marginalized, but many in her community struggle. Lorain, a city of about 65,000 on the shore of Lake Erie, has never recovered from the loss of a Ford assembly plant and two steel plants. Around 28 percent of Lorain’s residents now live in poverty. By the grim standards of her area, Forbus is doing well. “I’m definitely privileged,” she says. Even so, she knows that despite her diligent saving and careful budgeting, there is a good chance that she will not be able to retire at 65. She dreads the prospect of having to remain in the labor market as an elderly person. “Something like waitressing — past a certain age, that’s really difficult,” she says. And she admits that she finds it jarring that even for someone like her, retirement may be an unachievable objective. “I do feel our system fails too many people,” she says.

Read by Malcolm Hillgartner

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez

Engineered by Steven Szczesniak

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how many people get a 34, 35, 36 on the act score breakdown.

ACT General Info

We know that 36 is the best possible score on the ACT and that any score in the 30s is considered very good. But how good is a top score of 34, 35, or 36? And how many students earn these scores every year?

In this post, we break down just how rare those top scores are and how many students get them each year. Learn how you can stand out in the application process with a top score—and how to raise your ACT score to get there.

How Many Test Takers Get Top 1% ACT Scores?

To do this analysis, we used the latest report from ACT, Inc., for the class of 2022, who took the ACT as sophomores, juniors, and seniors. If you want to read more ACT score statistics, you can check out the report yourself .

In the class of 2022, 1,349,644 students took the ACT. T he average composite score was 19.8 out of 36 ; this means that a score of 20 or higher puts you above average.(For more info on how the ACT is scored, read our article ).

But if we consider 20 and up good scores (since they're above average), what would qualify as an amazing ACT score?

To find out, let's look at ACT percentiles—that is, the rankings tied to composite scores . For example, a 90th percentile score would mean that you scored the same as or higher than 90% of test takers.

On the ACT, 34 and up is the 99th percentile. So if you score 34 or higher, you're in the top 1% of test takers!

But exactly how many students earned a 33, 34, 35, or 36 in 2022? And which score is the rarest? Let's take a look:

Source: ACT 20 National Profile Report

Unsurprisingly, a full 36 is the rarest score of all— just 0.25% of all test takers earned a perfect ACT score .

Roughly three times more students earned the next-highest score of 35; however, this is still a very rare score that just 0.775% of test takers earned.

Note that about four times more students earned a 34 than they did a 36 . You can now see why a 36 is so impressive—even among top scorers, such a score really sets students apart, particularly for the most competitive schools .

How Many Test Takers Get Top 10% ACT Scores?

By reading our article on ACT percentiles , you'll see that getting 28 or higher would put you in the top 10% of scorers. So if 2 0 and up is good and 3 4 and up is incredible, a score of 2 8 or higher would qualify as a great ACT score .

The breakdowns for ACT scores between 28 and 32 are as follows:

Source: ACT 2022 National Profile Report

You can probably see why raising your ACT score by just a few points can have such a big impact on your admission chances ! Because admissions is all about comparing you with other applicants, the more unique you can make yourself, the better your chances of getting in will be . And the higher your ACT score is, the rarer it is!

By How Much Should You Improve Your ACT Score?

We know just how impressive top 10% ACT scores are and how rare top 1% scores are. You might be wondering, though: what kind of score should you aim for? Should everyone go for a 36?

By far the best way to figure out what ACT score to shoot for is to consider the average scores of admitted applicants to the schools you're applying to . Do this, and you'll be able to see exactly how high of an ACT score you'll need to get to help you stand apart from the crowd. Check out our in-depth guide for more tips on how to set an ACT goal score .

That said, there are some general guidelines you should follow to figure out your goal score. Of course, you can always aim for perfection, but these goals are manageable and give all students a competitive ACT score.

Here's what we recommend:

• If you have a score in the teens, work to get your score to at least 20. This will put you in the top half of test takers and really give a boost to your college applications.
• If you have a score in the low to mid-20s (22–27), although you're above average, retake the ACT and try to get a 28 . Getting to the top 10% of scorers can open up a lot of scholarship opportunities . It'll also make your college applications that much more impressive, opening doors at selective colleges.
• If you have 28 or higher, raising your score by even just 2 or 3 points can give a huge boost to your percentile ranking. For example, going from just 28 to 30 takes you from the 90th to the 94th percentile. Likewise, going from 31 to 34 takes you from the 95th to the 98th percentile—or from the top 5% to the top 2% of test takers!
• Once you get to 33 and up, you're in Ivy League and competitive college territory. Again, an increase of just a few points on the ACT can make a big difference in your admission chances!

But how feasible are these score increases? The truth is, it's definitely possible to raise your ACT composite score, as long as you study regularly and focus on your weak areas . Do this, and you could very well go from 17 to 25, 20 to 28, or even 25 to 35.

For example, say you really struggled with plane geometry on your first round of the ACT and didn't get any of these questions correct. Since plane geometry accounts for around 20% of all math problems , it has a big impact on your score.

Don't let these types of questions keep you from getting a high score! ( You can take official ACT practice tests if you want to see the kinds of questions the ACT asks, by the way.)

Now, imagine your Math score was 23. If you work on plane geometry to fill in your content gap, even if you got just five more questions right, you could get a final Math score of 26. If you get all the plane geometry questions right this time and everything else stays the same, you could get a 28 on ACT Math!

This says nothing of how your score could improve if you work on other content weaknesses, your pacing, and your test-taking strategies, too. If you can identify your weaknesses and work on fixing them, it's not hard to improve your ACT composite score by several points!

4 Tips for Raising Your ACT Score

Now that you have a clear idea as to the number of points you need to reach your ACT goal score, let's go over some helpful tips for raising your score.

#1: Focus On Your Weaknesses

As we discussed briefly above, focusing on your biggest content weaknesses and skills should be one of your top priorities as you prep for the ACT. To fix your weak points, you'll need to do the following:

• Attack more practice problems in your areas of weakness. Having ample quality materials with which to practice will give you more opportunities to hone your skills.
• Devote more time to your weak spots than you do to the skills and question types you're already comfortable with. This way you won't waste time going over the concepts you already know.
• Analyze your mistakes as well as any patterns in your mistakes. One good way to do this is to keep an errors journal in which you note all the errors you made on practice questions, what the right answers were, and how you were supposed to solve them.

Do all of this and you'll not only figure out what areas you're weak in, but also how you can shift your approach toward these types of ACT problems to help you score more points.

#2: Practice Pacing Yourself

Don't expect to raise your score if you don't know how to properly pace yourself. Learning how to use your time wisely is a major part of doing well on the ACT.

As you likely already know, each section is timed differently; therefore, the time you'll get per question will vary depending on the section.

Here is an overview of the time you'll have per section and per question on the ACT:

You'll have the longest amount of time per question on the Math section, and the shortest amount of time per question on the English section.

Typically, you don't want to spend more than this average time per question on any one question. However, if you're not aiming for a perfect score , you should be able to guess on at least a few questions in each section without it heavily affecting your score .

#3: Learn Key Test-Taking Strategies

There are tons of strategies you should know before you take the ACT. These tips teach you things such as the following:

• How to approach and understand questions quickly
• How to effectively use the information you're given
• How to guess on a question to give yourself the best chance of getting it right

Our guide to the top ACT test-taking strategies goes over some of the most helpful tips to know for test day. Briefly, though, here are a few of the most important ones:

• How to use the process of elimination
• When to plug in answers and plug in numbers on Math problems
• How to read passages on Reading , English , and Science

#4: Take Full-Length Practice Tests

If you're not taking full-length ACT practice tests, get to it. ACT, Inc. offers six free practice tests you can download as PDFs. I suggest sticking mainly with official tests as these are guaranteed to give you a highly realistic test-taking experience. What's more, they're all free !

In terms of prep, try to space out your practice tests throughout your ACT study plan . Take one at the beginning of your study schedule to get your baseline score (the score you start with before engaging in any prep), and then take the others intermittently throughout your study plan. You'll essentially use practice tests to determine your weaknesses and strengths .

Make sure to take each test in a quiet room to give you a realistic experience. Also, time yourself in accordance with the official ACT time limits described above; doing this will raise your stamina so that you don't run out of energy on the actual test!

What's Next?

Learn more about how the ACT is scored so you can develop target raw scores for whatever your scoring goal is.

Want to get a perfect score yourself? Get tips from our ACT 36 full scorer on studying . Even if you're not aiming for a perfect 36, this article will give you the skills you need to raise your score.

Read more about the highest possible ACT score of 36 and just how rare it is.

Want to improve your ACT score by four or more points? Download our free guide to the top five strategies you need in your prep to improve your ACT score dramatically.

Halle Edwards graduated from Stanford University with honors. In high school, she earned 99th percentile ACT scores as well as 99th percentile scores on SAT subject tests. She also took nine AP classes, earning a perfect score of 5 on seven AP tests. As a graduate of a large public high school who tackled the college admission process largely on her own, she is passionate about helping high school students from different backgrounds get the knowledge they need to be successful in the college admissions process.

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ACT Test Scores

Viewing, sending, and understanding your scores., act superscoring is available.

ACT provides an automatically calculated ACT Superscore to all students who have taken the ACT more than once from September 2016 to current day. Log in to MyACT to view and send scores.

Scores for the ACT Test

How can i see my scores.

When available, your scores are posted online and accessed using your MyACT account. 

ACT Customer Support cannot provide your scores by phone, email, chat, or fax. 

• Multiple choice scores are normally available two weeks after each national test date, but it can sometimes take up to eight weeks.
• Writing scores are normally available about two weeks after your multiple-choice scores.

If you took the writing test, your overall scores are not officially reported until your writing scores have been added. Viewing your scores online does not speed up reporting.

On select test dates, ACT performs equating activities to ensure that scores reported have a constant meaning across all test forms. During equating test dates, scores are available within 3-8 weeks.

For the 2023-2024 testing year, equating will be adminstered in October.

Score reporting dates

Scores are delivered over a window of time after the test date and are processed continuously during business hours. ACT is committed to providing your scores as quickly as possible but cannot guarantee a specific date for your scores to be reported.

Occasionally we are unable to post scores when expected. If yours are not available yet, it may be due to one of these issues: 

• Answer documents from your test center arrived late or your test date was rescheduled.
• The "Matching Information" you provided on the answer document (name, date of birth, and Match Number) is not consistent with the Matching Information on your admission ticket . Scores cannot be reported until they can be accurately matched to the correct person. You provided incomplete or inaccurate test form information on the answer document, or the answer document has not cleared all other scoring accuracy checks. 
• An irregularity is reported at your test center. 
• You owe any registration fees. 

If your scores are not yet available, while during the posted timeframe, ACT is unable to provide a status or timeline about a specific score.

Delivery timelines

ACT sends score report data to the recipients you provided during registration; these include your high school and any institutions with college codes you provided. ACT also provides your scores through your web account.

Your scores in MyACT  

MyACT is mobile-accessible and friendly and all results can be accessed on a PC, tablet, or mobile device.

When you select score recipients, you’ll have the option of sending either score reports from the specific test event or you can choose to send your superscore.

You may print an unofficial copy of your ACT test score by using your browser’s print option. A PDF student report is currently unavailable.

Additional Services

Request a copy of the questions and answers.

Certain national test dates and centers give you the opportunity to order a copy of your questions, your answers, the answer key, and scoring instructions—plus the writing prompt, scoring rubric, and scores assigned to the optional writing test. 

Request a Copy

Score Verification Service

You can ask ACT to verify your multiple-choice and/or your writing test scores up to 12 months after your test date. Please download the  Request for Score Verification (PDF) . 

You will need to complete the form, and enclose a check payable to ACT Customer Support for the applicable fee(s).

• For multiple-choice tests, ACT will verify that your responses were checked against the correct scoring key.
• For the writing test, ACT will verify that your essay was scored by two independent, qualified readers and by a third reader in the event that the two scores differed by more than one point in any domain. ACT will also verify that your essay was properly captured and displayed to readers. If errors are discovered during score verification, ACT will rescore your essay.

ACT will inform you by letter of the results of the score verification approximately three to five weeks after receiving your request.

If a scoring error is discovered, your scores will be changed and corrected reports will be released to you and all previous score report recipients at no charge. In addition, your score verification fee will be refunded.

Score Verification Request (PDF)

Correcting Errors in Your Score Report

Student errors

If, after you receive your score report, you find that you made a significant error in the information you supplied to us about yourself, or if you want to change your address, you may ask us to correct your record. Write to:

ACT Customer Support P.O. Box 414 Iowa City, IA 52243-0414 USA

Write within three months of receiving your score report. Enclose a photocopy or printed pdf of your Student Report describing the error and the change you are requesting.

There is no fee for making the correction, but you must pay the applicable fee for each corrected report you wish sent to a college, agency, or high school.

Other errors

If you think there is an error (on any information other than your test scores), write to ACT Customer Support—Score Reports at the above address within three months of receiving your score report. Enclose a photocopy or printed pdf of your Student Report describing the error and the change you are requesting.

If an error is our responsibility and requires you to retest, there will be no fee. If the error does not involve retesting, corrected score reports will be released to you and all previous score recipients at no charge. 

If an error is not to be found to be made by ACT and you wish to send corrected reports, you must request and pay for Additional Score Reports.

Changing Score Recipients

If you need to change a score recipient, you have until Thursday noon after the regularly scheduled test date.

Need to send more scores?

In addition to the four institutions you selected upon registering, you can send your scores to others, even after you test. Requests are processed after all scores for your test option—the ACT or the ACT with writing—are ready. 

Can scores be cancelled?

ACT reserves the right to cancel test scores when there is reason to believe the scores are invalid. See the Compromises/Disruptions in the Testing Process—Limitation of Remedies section of the ACT Terms and Conditions (PDF)  for details.

Outside of state testing and district testing, you may request to cancel scores for a particular test date. Contact us online and we will provide you a form to complete and return to us. We will then permanently cancel that score record for the indicated test date and send cancellation notices to any score recipients.

What does it all mean?

There's a lot of information provided in the ACT score report.

Follow the link below to learn why we show individual reporting categories, how we arrived at your Composite score—and more!

National ranks  

How do you compare? 

Your national ranks tell you how your scores compare to those earned by recent high school graduates who took the ACT. Colleges use this information to help make admissions decisions, and scholarship agencies may base awards on it. 

How schools use results

Your current and future schools want to learn more about you.

Just as you can use national ranks to get a sense of your strengths and weaknesses, so can your high school and potential colleges.  A high rank in a content area may suggest a good chance of success in related college majors and careers. A low rank may indicate that you need to develop your skills more by taking additional coursework in that area. This information is helpful for you as well as your current and future schools. 

Should I retest?  

43% of ACT test takers chose to take the test more than once last year, and more than half of them improved their scores. 

Why every point matters on the ACT test

Did you know improving by just a single test point can be worth thousands of dollars in financial aid for your college education? The ACT ® test is important to your future—and can open up new opportunities for college and career.

What scores are reported if I test more than once?  

You determine which set of scores is sent to colleges or scholarship programs. We will release only the scores from the test date (month and year) and test location (e.g., National, State, School) you designate.    

Can I combine scores from different test dates to create a new Composite score?  

Yes - superscoring enables you to combine scores from different test dates.

Can I report only my writing scores or only my multiple-choice scores from a test date?  

No. All scores from a test date will be reported together.   

Can I combine my writing scores from one test date with my multiple-choice scores from another?  

Yes - superscoring enables you to combine writing scores from one test date with multiple-choice scores from another test date.

Test Security Hotline

Cheating hurts everyone – if you see it, report it. You can make an anonymous report by using the Test Security Hotline . Discussing test content—including on social media—is not permitted. Students who don't do their own work put honest students at a disadvantage. If you suspect that someone is trying to take unfair advantages or encounter anything else out of the ordinary, please report it to ACT. 

Compromises and disruptions

See  ACT's Terms and Conditions  for remedies available to examinees affected by compromises or disruptions in the testing process.

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