How Much Weight Does the ACT Carry in an Application?

The ACT and College Admission Requirements

University testing policies can be divided into three categories, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The first approach, most common at smaller state schools, is to require a certain minimum ACT threshold for consideration of admission. Applicants who fail to achieve these scores will either be required to undergo remediation or denied admission automatically. The second type is known as test-optional or test-flexible admission. Test-optional schools allow applicants to decide for themselves whether or not to submit test scores, although in most cases those scores will be considered if sent. Test-flexible schools permit the substitution of other assessments, such as Advanced Placement exams, for the ACT or SAT. The third and most widely used method is known as "holistic" admissions. Schools that use holistic admissions, including the most selective institutions in the country, say they weigh every part of an application and therefore publish no minimum test score. As we will see below, the absence of a stated cutoff does not mean a school has no test-score expectations.

The Common Data Set and the Importance of Admission Test Scores

Most universities in the United States report information on their undergraduate students via a template that is known as the Common Data Set (CDS). The CDS for a specific university is usually published on that school's website, typically the section devoted to institutional research (this term refers to research on the institution rather than research conducted by the institution). Universities rank standardized admission tests such as the ACT at one of four levels: very important, important, considered, or not considered. Harvard University is an example of a school at which test scores, according to the CDS, are neither very important nor important, but only considered. The CDS-stated weighting of test scores, however, does not always seem to align with actual admission practices, which are better reflected by the average ACT performance of an institution's students.

Average ACT Scores and Institutional Selectivity

Institutional acceptance rates and mean student test scores tend to be inversely proportional; higher average scores generally correlate to lower acceptance rates and vice versa. At a highly selective school like Harvard University, which admits only a small single-digit share of applicants, the middle-50% ACT Composite range sits near the top of the scale, in the low-to-mid 30s, and very few admitted students score below 30. A moderately selective flagship such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which accepts roughly half of its applicants, shows a middle-50% range several points lower, and a broad-access university like Utah State, which admits the large majority who apply, reports a range lower still, reaching down into the low 20s at the 25th percentile. These profiles are illustrative and drift from year to year, so check a school's current Common Data Set for its range before you judge where you stand.

ACT Scores and Merit Scholarships

Some merit scholarships for undergraduate study use ACT scores to pre-screen candidates or as one of the selection criteria. These awards are usually based primarily on test scores and high school GPA. Many flagship state universities run sliding-scale programs—the University of Mississippi's Academic Merit Scholarship is one example—in which the award rises step by step as a student's ACT score climbs. Others, such as the Presidential Scholars program at the University of Texas-Arlington, offer a fixed multi-year award to students who clear a stated ACT threshold and class-rank cutoff. Dollar amounts, score cutoffs, and eligibility rules change often, so confirm the specifics on each school's current scholarship page.

Taking Both the ACT and the SAT for University Admission

In today's intensely competitive admissions climate, it has become fairly common for applicants to take and submit scores for both the ACT and the SAT. At some highly selective universities, a meaningful minority of admitted students—on the order of one in five to one in three—submit results from both exams, since the two tests draw on overlapping but not identical pools of applicants. The exact proportions vary from school to school and year to year, and where a class profile reports them you can read the current shares off that school's Common Data Set. At some schools, dual test-taking and acceptance appear to move together, but any real benefit is hard to pin down from admission statistics alone—and correlation, of course, is not causation. Submit both only if each score genuinely strengthens your case.