He will likely retake Sept 10 and Oct 22. I did a forum search of the questions about ACTs in this range and whether to focus energy on raising the score or on doing pre-screens and auditions and was pretty satisfied with the discussions. S is probably in a boat like @ScreenName48105 from mid 2015.
Now, the projections for his score and this actual number are a few points away from each other, so who knows what will happen in the next sittings, but I think the impacts are roughly as follows, compared to say getting a 30, as far as I would guess:
- UNT auto-scholarhip drops from $8,000 to $6,000
- Frost school stamps scholarship might not care, but 28-32 is the main range of ACTs at the U
- Temple U auto-full-tuition for 32 ACT is rather farther away
- Merit at USC Thorton probably not so good
Academic merit in general would take a hit, so may think a bit more about lower-academically-ranked schools or those with music merit, assuming S’ skills in that category are truly legit.
While still in the Edit time window, I will add that we are not going to focus on this until the very busy junior year is over, then we will decide how to approach. It is at least good to have ‘a’ score at this point.