What Is a Good ACT Score For College Admissions In 2024?

Do you want to be admitted into your dream college, and want to know how much you need to score on the ACT to get there?

Then it would help if you aimed to score around 26 to get into a good college. On the other hand, if you are targeting top colleges like Harvard University and other Ivy League colleges, you must try to score more than 30 in your ACT examination. 

Besides, scoring maximum in all the examination sections would be best to ensure easy admission into your dream college. 

You can continue reading if you want to know more about good ACT scores. In the following article, I have mentioned details about the ACT score, the average ACt score you need to get into top colleges, etc. 

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started. 

What is a good ACT score?

A good score will help you get into most good colleges. Besides, it ensures your chances to get into a few of the best colleges in the country. 

If you can score more than 75 percentile on your ACT exam, it indeed is a good ACT score. You must get over 26 in your exam to reach the 75 percentile. 

However, scoring more than  85 percentile on your ACT examination increases your chances of getting into the top colleges in the country. If you dream of being admitted into one of the best colleges, scoring 33 or more on your ACT examination can be a good score. 

How is ACT’s scoring system?

A good ACT score will help you to score more percentile than the majority of the test takers. Hence, an ACT score of more than 50% is considered a good score that will help you land a good college. 

ACT tests include four sections that are Maths, English, Reading, and Science. Each subject is scored between 1 to 36. However, you need to aim for more than 26 in each section to achieve a good score. 

The percentiles of the ACT exam vary each year. However, you can estimate your percentile with the help of the average score required for different percentiles. You can refer to the following table for calculating the average percentile.  

Percentile	Math	English	Reading	Science	Composite
50	18	19	20	20	20
75	24	24	25	24	24
80	25	25	27	25	26
85	26	28	30	26	27
90	28	31	32	28	29
95	31	34	34	31	31
99	35	35	36	35	35
100	36	36	36	36	36

What is the ACT score to get into your dream college?

A good score differs according to the college you are aiming to get admitted to. 

That’s because a good ACT score for some colleges may not be capable of getting you admitted into the top college like Harvard or Columbia University. Hence, all you need to do is target an ACT score after researching the college you dream of getting admitted into. 

Now you might wonder how to check a good ACT score required for the college you wish to be admitted to. 

Here is a solution to your issue. I have listed the ‘GOOD’ ACT scores for the well-known colleges in the nation. You can go through the table and set a goal to score the best in your exam.

College	ACT score for the 75th percentile	Act score for 25th percentile.
Boston University	35	33
Colgate University	34	31
Bowdoin college	34	32
Colorado College	33	29
Indiana University Bloomington	27	27
Columbia University	35	34
Miami University	31	25
Pennsylvania State University	33	29
Rice University	35	34
University of Connecticut	33	28
Tulane University	34	31
University of Georgia	34	31
University of Minnesota Twin Cities	33	28
University of Maryland, College Park	34	31
University of Pennsylvania	36	35
University of Richmond	35	32
University of Pittsburgh	33	28
Villanova University	34	32
Wesleyan University	35	33
Washington University in St. Louis	35	33

Tips to improve your ACT score

Scoring more into your ACT examination can undoubtedly be difficult, but hard work always pays off. Practicing and dedicating yourself to the process will help you to get an edge over others in your ACT exam. 

Here are some tips that will help you to get a good score. 

• Make use of official resources like practice tests and other study materials available on the official website.
• Try to solve the questions that you know first and then work on complicated questions. This approach will help you to save time. 

• ACT paper has more questions which makes managing time difficult during the ACT test. Hence, to cope with this, you can practice time management while giving mocks. This will increase your speed, and you can complete almost all the questions in your test. 

• Increase your reading speed by reading daily. This will help you complete your reading section quickly, and you can spend more time on the difficult questions. 

• Practice Mathematics and memorize formulas. It will give you extra time to work on other questions. 

Related read:

• Best CFA Prep Courses & Study Materials
• What Time Does The SAT Start
• What Is a Good SAT Score for Ivy League Admission

Conclusion

Scoring 30 on the ACT examination can be difficult, considering the exam’s complexity. However, with the aim of scoring 30, you will be able to at least get a score of 26 on your ACT examination, which is surely a good score to get into good colleges.

Above all, you can always aim to get a score of more than 33 to be eligible for the merit scholarships. 

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