If you take a single-day ACT on most national test dates, initial ACT score reports will return to a test-taker’s ACT account 10 days after the exam is completed. This will be followed by a slightly more detailed score report and, on test dates in April, June, and December, the full Test Information Release to students who have ordered it.
Once you receive your scores, you have the option to send them to as many colleges and universities as you choose through your ACT account. On a positive note, it does not take long to send your scores off: log into your account at www.myact.org. In the top menu bar, select “My Scores” and choose to send off the scores from the test dates you’d like.
Once you’ve selected the test date results you’d like to submit, you can submit those scores to any schools you choose.
It will take two to seven weeks for scores to arrive at the schools of your choosing. Universities receive scores in different ways—sometimes individually, sometimes in batches—so the processing time will vary.
This is to say that, if you are planning on taking tests early during your senior year, be mindful of application deadlines for the universities you’re applying to. Make sure you are testing early enough for your scores to arrive at the schools you are interested in.
The colleges and universities you apply to will receive only the scores from test dates that you choose to submit to them.
Additionally, if you choose to submit a super score, colleges and universities will receive the super scored section results from multiple test dates.
If a test-taker takes the ACT on multiple occasions, the test-taker can select the best section results from different tests to compile a “super” score. So, if a test-taker takes the ACT twice and that test-taker does really well on the English and Math sections from the first test but better on the Reading and Science sections from the second test, the test-taker can take the English and Math scores from the first exam and the Reading and Science scores from the second and combine them to create a super composite.
Your super score report would have just those section scores (not the complete report from each exam).
In short, probably not. When you are registering for the ACT, you are given the option to choose four schools to send your scores to for free. Free is great, but, in this case, “free” also comes with some risk: you won’t know how you did on the ACT before the scores are sent to the universities you’ve selected. Additionally, once you have taken the exam, you cannot choose to cancel those score reports.
Instead, take the ACT and wait to see how you did. Once you receive your scores, you can choose what to do with your scores as is desirable.
It costs $15 per test date per report when sending scores to colleges and universities. This is to say if you want to include scores from two different test dates (or, as the ACT calls them, “test events”), it will cost $30 (or $15 x 2).
To report just your super score is also $15 per test date per report.
If you tested prior to September 2018 and would like to send off scores from those dates, the ACT will charge $15 per report plus a $26 fee for each archived test date event.
So, be sure to budget accordingly for the cost of submitting test scores.
Remember, when you submit your score reports, you are consenting to release the data from specific test dates (“test events”) to institutions of your choosing. You can choose what test scores are released and to whom they are released.
Note that ACT score reporting is not instantaneous. It takes up to two months from the day of your test for a college or university to receive your scores, so if you are testing in the late summer or fall of your senior year and trying to apply to universities by an early deadline, make sure to leave enough time to report your scores before those deadlines fall.
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