Good composite ACT score (35 Superscore) with one lower subscore - should my daughter retake or roll with it?

Applying to College
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Question for the board…my daughter is debating whether to stand pat with her most recent ACT score or retest. She has taken the ACT four times, once as a freshman, once as a sophomore, and twice as a junior. Her most recent composite ACT score was a 34 (M 35, E 35, R 28, S 36). The reading score frustrates her. She is debating whether to retake the test. Of the four tests, her highest reading score is a 33. She plans to go to college for engineering (pre-med is still a consideration). STEM is her strong suit. Our daughter would like to attend a top 30-50 school, with the University of Michigan at the top of her list. She attends a very small, rural school in the Missouri Valley region, so she will be an OOS student for most of the schools she applies to.

Our daughter asked me for my opinion on retaking the ACT and I’m not sure what to tell her. She is a good tennis player, one of the top 6 singles players in her class. Her game would benefit from concentrating on tennis, and retesting consumes valuable time.

If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to hear the thoughts of this group. Thanks in advance!

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Depends on if the school superscores or not. U Mich does - so there’s no reason to retake for them.

Most schools likely do superscore but not all do.

Some get burned out by taking more. My kid took I think 6 times - he wasn’t burned out but didn’t really prep and his last was his best.

A 34 is already outstanding - and while Michigan is a great school, there’s tons of great engineering schools and where you go matters not so much. It’s one major where pedigree isn’t that huge a deal in most cases. So she’ll be fine either way - and I don’t think a higher score will matter. But because they superscore, she’ll already have a higher score than 34 - because she’s already a 34.75 if those other three scores are the highest in each category.

But I’d say - there’s no need at all to retake for UMich and really no need overall for most any school.

Best of luck

Does U-M superscore?

  • We will use your highest superscore, which means that we will consider the best sub-scores reported across multiple test dates. You may submit your scores as a superscore, but if you wish to have us calculate the superscore for you instead, you may submit all of your test scores.
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Thank you for your response. I lean the same way as you.

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I would not retake with a superscore of 35 because there is minimal upside.

For schools that allow self reporting of test scores, she will report the highest composite and highest section scores. So, even if a school doesn’t technically superscore, they will see all the components of a 35 superscore and never see the 29 in reading.

Even though she is looking at reach schools like Michigan, make sure she has a balanced list including at least one affordable highly likely school that she would be happy to attend. Good luck.

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I agree with others–as long as the college superscores this is a non-issue.

I’d also emphasize really building a thoughtful list. There are many more than 30-50 colleges where you can get a great engineering education, or great preparation for med school, or both. High test scores like your daughter’s can be used to really pick exactly what sort of overall college experience she wants, which is valuable in itself, but also is related to actually succeeding in hard tracks like engineering or pre-health.

High test scores can also be used to chase merit. As a general rule, I think no one should pay more than what the family finds comfortably affordable for undergrad, which to me usually means not a lot of debt (I think the federal limits are pretty well-considered). But if something like medical school is a possibility, it makes sense to actually be even more aggressive about conserving family financial resources for possible med school costs.

And to be frank, OOS publics are not always the best deal for high numbers kids. Indeed, part of the point of most OOS programs is to cross-subsidize the in-state students, so they are often more or less trying to extract as much net tuition out of the OOS program as the market will bear.

So with high numbers, some privates may do better than OOS publics, sometimes even compete with in-state publics. Savvy families I know with similar sorts of goals look at universities like Case Western, Rochester, RPI, and so on.

That said, some OOS publics do offer merit, and some of those are excellent for engineering and also life sciences and such. This list includes Minnesota, Pitt, Michigan State, and others.

Anyway, point being my two cents is I would gently try to guide your daughter into thinking more broadly about what her excellent test scores can do for her, beside just crossing an arbitrary line in some generic ranking list. I think if you really get into the spirit of that, this whole process can become very exciting, and end with multiple really interesting offers to consider.

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