This December I scored a 36 on my act in a single sitting. I am graduating in 2021, meaning that within my class, individual retakes will be available for subjects on the ACT for students in my class. With this change, the percentage that scores a 36 should drastically increase. In my opinion, this will degrade what having a 36 on my college resume signals, also that anyone scoring a 34+ should be guaranteed a 36 after ample retesting as focus is isolated on that subject for the day. Will this honestly mean that I will have to get a 1600 on my ACT to have the same comparative significance for the schools I apply to? I feel as if my scores have been invalidated
Your scores have not been invalidated.
But surely diluted?
No. And only schools that superscore the ACT will accept/look at the individual section test scores.
Also, the competitiveness of your ACT score does not increase endlessly. One who scored 34 on the ACT will rarely be rejected in favor of one who scored 36; at that point, other parts of your application become much more important. I’d recommend you focus on those rather than worrying about “diluted” test scores.
I consider this an invalid assumption. Extremely so.
CC students seem to have the belief that X amount of study automatically converts to Y points, and this relationship extends endlessly, Research shows this is simply not the case, despite what test prep companies claim in their advertising.
But potentially diluted? Yes.
In the future, we don’t know how colleges will be treating individual section test scores versus single sitting all 4 sections but my guess is that most colleges will eventually take any individual section test score (i.e. superscore). If this happens, the sheer number of students getting very high or even perfect composite scores (36) will certainly increase, diluting the score of a student who gets a 36 in a single sitting which is extremely impressive. In 2017, only 2,765 out of 2 million testers got a 36 composite. In the future, with individual section testing, I’m sure we will see 10,000+ testers with a composite 36 which certainly dilutes the score. In addition, the ability to take these 4 sections separately favor wealthy kids who can afford to take these tests multiple times and hire expensive private tutors.
As the social science surrounding these tests further develops, this could be shown to be true. As a practical matter, however, I think you could safely leave this concern to others, and stand with your current ACT testing (along with recommended subject tests, etc.).