What Your ACT Score Report Looks Like to Colleges

When you register for the ACT exam, you’ll be asked to provide much more information than just your name and address. Youll also be asked to fill out details on your classes, grades, and extracurricular activities. ACT gathers this information for its own research. In exchange for your data, ACT will provide you with a section of your score report called College and Career Planning. This portion of your report places the strengths and activities you provide along two axes of interest—Data vs. Ideas and People vs. Things—and then compares those results to your stated major. Most counselors will tell you not to take this career planning report too seriously. Your interests in high school and college will likely change as you’re exposed to more opportunities. When reviewing the report, most students ignore this section altogether, noticing that it simply confirms what they already knew about themselves or that it doesnt really capture the full scope of their interests. College and Career Planning only appears on the Student Score Report [you can read more about interpreting your Student Score Report here]; an entirely different report goes to colleges when you request your scores to be sent. In fact, the supplementary information you supply takes up more than half of the ACT College Report. To get a handle on what college admission officers see, lets break down Ann Taylors sample College Report ACT provides. The first third of the College Report displays the same scaled and detailed scores that students see on their own reports. The one difference is that US Rank is immediately followed by Institutional Rank, meaning ACT highlights your score in relation to those of the colleges most recent freshman class. To the right of these scores, under Information Reported by the Student, the first thing ACT lists is College Choice. In the sample, University of Omega is listed as student Ann Taylors first choice! A University of Omega admission officer who sees this ranking might well conclude that if she offers Ann a spot in the freshman class, Ann would likely take the offer. Weve written about the concept of demonstrated interest [elsewhere on our blog], but here’s the general idea: schools are looking for ways to identify students who are really serious about accepting admission offers. Designating your top school as #1 might seem to be an effective strategy, but what message are you sending to the admission office of your fourth-choice school? Most students dont realize theyre demonstrating interest when they fill out the test registration and select the schools where they want their four included reports sent. Heres an image of the registration screen: Note that when you add a score report, ACTs registration site asks you to set the priority for each school. The level of priority gets reported as Choice on the report to the school. Similarly, you are asked to select from a series of preferences about the kind of college you may want to attend. Alongside your scores, your preferences are reported to each school. If you select a public 4-year co-ed university in California, that all-women liberal arts college in Massachusetts where you’re also applying might raise an eyebrow. The back of the report lists more information that youve given ACT: high school, subjects studied, extracurricular activities, background, financial aid, enrollment and housing plans, interests, and even weaknesses. Some of these data points are more fraught then others, but all could be used by a school trying to create a well-balanced freshman class. The ACT College Report concludes with a section called Chances of Success at [University]. In order for college entrance exams to be accepted as valid, they have to be valid AT something. In the case of the ACT and SAT, they are valid at predicting success freshman year, even though this validity routinely undergoes controversy. If the university to which youre applying participates in ACT Research Services, ACT will display your chance of receiving a C or better and a B or better in a variety of classes. These chances are based on how others with your score have performed in these classes in the past. In Anns sample case, 49% of First-Time Students with her score range received a B or better, so the assumption is that Ann shares a 49% chance of receiving that same grade. Colleges might use this information to estimate what additional supportive programs will be needed for an incoming class, or they might use these chances as a way to make admission decisions. You may find that the best approach is to decline the four score reports included in your registration so that you can avoid ranking schools. Though you will incur additional charges, you will gain more control over what exactly gets sent if you wait to send until after you’ve received your scores. Similarly, you may find that leaving some preferences set to no preference will show greater flexibility if youre applying to many different kinds of schools. The sample College Report demonstrates that you might be unintentionally sharing a lot of information about yourself with schools by filling out your ACT registration. Of course, just because colleges see all of this information doesnt necessarily mean they’ll factor it into their decisions. Theres a real chance that they simply scrape your scores into their application software and completely ignore your stated interests and profile. In other words, its not worth your time and energy to worry about trying to answer each question in the way you imagine your top colleges would want, but it’s worth being aware that all of the schools where you apply will see the information you reveal.