should I take the ACT a 4th time?

lostaccount
Sun, 19 Jun 2016 14:57:44 +0000

"Yup, as manamanawegi says don’t feel bad about taking 4th time and individual cases vary. Try to achieve your best. Never give up "

Platitudes make better fridge magnets than they do advice in real life. The reason is that there is almost always a platitude that counters the original one but sounds as good, like “know when to fold”, "Time spent on one activity is unavailable for another. "

Minor improvement from one test to another is probably attributed to and attributable to error. Test-retest reliability for the test is high but by no means perfect. People taking the test multiple times are often capitalizing on error when it is favorable to them. Without some sort of intervening event (like immense studying), scores are likely to be slightly different over two test sessions but usually not significantly different. Given regression to the mean, very high scores or very low scores are less apt to get much lower or much higher due to chance factors. That means that the chances are greater (favor) that “luck” will add less to improving already high scores. As a result, raising already unusually high scores (and scores 1SD+ above the mean are such scores) is probable only with immense studying so that there are reliable differences in skill level (the ability the test score serves as proxy for) as it pertains to taking the test. At that point the decision making should involve consideration of the cost-benefit ratio of spending that amount of time on acquiring a skill that is useless beyond this particular test.

As others have noted, the so called “top schools” (most competitive) are not concerned with the difference between a 33 and a 35 ACT score. Some less competitive schools may be more interested if they can’t attract high scoring students in ways aside from paying them to get certain scores and paying them to attend their school.

{No need to object, I know that is a blunt way to express a common practice among less competitive schools but those colleges give “merit” to keep their published score ranges high to keep/improve their standing on the US news rankings, an unfortunate gaming strategy that colleges engage in- which then encourages applicants to engage in similar meaningless activities like taking tests over and over again-just calling it what it is). I call it what it is because that is what we all should be doing to encourage schools to be more transparent and to change their practices to encourage students to engage in adaptive rather than useless activities-something that could bring college admissions back to a reasonable process for the next generation of students.

Bottom line, for the most competitive schools getting a 32 or a 35 makes little difference. But the mentality taken towards college makes a huge difference as does (ad con) judgements about whether a student spent his/her time on meaningful intellectually drive activities or on gaming grades and scores throughout his/her high school career.