Many colleges practice superscoring, which impacts students who have taken the SAT or ACT more than once. When colleges superscore, students will be evaluated based on their highest scores across each of the test dates completed, rather than their highest total or composite score from a particular test date.
SAT SUPERSCORING
Superscoring the SAT is common practice for most colleges.
Superscoring the SAT is easy: you add your highest Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score to your highest Math score to get a new high score.
ACT SUPERSCORING
Some schools choose to superscore the ACT, and some do not.
Superscoring the ACT is a little more complicated—and by more complicated, we really mean just one more step of math. To superscore the ACT you take the average of your highest English, Math, Reading, and Science sections by adding these four numbers together and dividing by 4.
**Note: When calculating a composite score, the ACT rounds up to the nearest whole number for averages at or above 0.5 and round down for averages below 0.5.
More and more colleges are starting to fully superscore the ACT, and we expect to see that trend continue.
However, there are other colleges that do NOT take this extra step of calculating a new composite; rather, they view the highest subsection scores in tandem with the highest single composite score (for example, this is the current practice at UVA, Brown, and Yale). While this doesn’t yield a higher composite number, it still benefits the student who has achieved higher subsection scores across different test dates.
Finally, there are colleges that do not superscore the ACT and will only consider a student’s single best ACT score.
Similar to Score Choice, superscoring differs from school to school and even within a particular school—for example, Cornell superscores for the SAT but not for the ACT.
In general, true superscoring of the ACT remains a less common practice than superscoring the SAT, but admissions requirements are changing more and more each year. We always recommend checking policies directly with your colleges of interest before submitting scores.
Need more personalized guidance on submitting your scores to college? Check out our blog on score submission or contact our experts!
