If you've taken the ACT and gotten your ACT test scores back, you probably want to know how you did. Or you might be planning for the ACT and want to know what ACT composite score to aim for. So what is a good ACT score?
In this article, we'll discuss what makes a good ACT composite score. We also give you a step-by-step guide to figuring out what a good ACT score is for you personally, depending on the colleges you plan to apply to. We'll also provide ACT score ranges for 38 popular schools and discuss what you can do if you fall short of your goal score.
Aside: Are you looking for SAT standards instead? If so, check out our SAT good score guidelines.
The ACT score range is from 1-36. As you might imagine, the higher your score, the better you did. But is there a certain cutoff that delineates a "good" ACT score?
To answer this question, it's important to understand how ACT scores work. Your composite score from 1-36 corresponds to a percentile that compares how you did to the general population of ACT test-takers. A higher percentile means you scored higher than that percentage of students. (So, a 55th percentile score means your score was higher than 55% of students).
Exclusive Free Bonus: Click here to download a free step-by-step guide on finding your personal ACT score target. Once you go through these steps, you'll know exactly what ACT score you need to aim for.
ACT test scores are set up to follow a normal distribution. This means that student performance tends to cluster around the middle of the scale—most test-takers score somewhere between a little below and a little above the average score. Far fewer test-takers score towards the higher and lower end of the scale.
The average ACT score is 19. If you've scored 20, then you've scored higher than 50% of test-takers. That's pretty good, depending on your frame of reference. A score of 24 places you at the 76th percentile—better than ¾ of test-takers!
Here's an abbreviated chart with ACT score percentiles for students from the class of 2023 to help you figure out how your scores position you among the overall student test-taker population:
1 5 10 13 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 34 36In terms of benchmarks for ACT score percentiles, a score of 16 places you at the 35th percentile, meaning you've scored better than about a third of test-takers. This isn't a very strong score.
We've already noted that a 19 is an average ACT score, at the 50th percentile. A score of 24 means you've scored better than about 78% of students. A 28 means you've scored better than 90% of students, and a 30 means you've scored better than 94% of them! Anything 34 or above is in the 99th percentile—a truly phenomenal score.
You can also see that not many people score near the bottom and the top of the scale because there's so little percentile change between scores here. Composite scores in the 1-10 range are all in the 1st percentile, and composite scores from 35-36 are all in the 99th-100th percentile!
By contrast, around the middle of the scale at 20, where most test-takers are clustered, a bump of a few points makes a big difference: going from 18 to 22 moves you from the 47th to the 69th percentile—a whopping 22 percentile points! But a similar 4-point bump from 24 to 28 only takes you from the 78th to the 90th percentile. That's just a 12-percentile bump. And from 30 to 34 is only a 5-percentile increase.
You may notice that section percentiles are a little different than the composite scale. However, the same general score distribution holds.
So, to recap, compared to all test-takers:
If you get a 34 or higher, you've ascended ACT mountain.
We've discussed how your ACT score compares to all the other test-takers. But what's more important is what makes a good ACT score for you, personally, based on the schools you are interested in. A 29 places you in the top 10% of test-takers, and it's a strong score for admission to schools like Texas A&M, Penn State, Ohio State, and Clemson University. But a 29 would actually be a very low score for super-selective institutions like the Ivies, Duke, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.
By contrast, a 29 would be an incredibly high score for less selective schools, like Oregon State (average ACT score 25), Kansas State (average ACT score 24) and University of Southern Indiana (average ACT score 22). If those were your goal scores, you wouldn't need a 29; aiming for a score a little above average (in the 21-25 range) would be adequate.
So, what makes a good ACT score for you is all relative, and mostly based on where you are trying to get into college.
Of course, it's also worth noting that the higher your standardized test scores, the more likely you are to get offered merit scholarships. We're going to focus primarily on figuring out the score you need for admission in this guide, but it's something to keep in mind.
Another thing to consider is that a higher ACT or SAT score can help you if you have a lower GPA than a school is looking for. (However, this won't help you so much at particularly selective institutions—they'll expect applicants with pretty high marks across the board.)
So how do you find out what makes for good ACT scores for the colleges you're interested in? In this section, we'll walk you through a quick five-step process for figuring out the best goal score for you.
To work through the following steps, we'll be filling out a worksheet for all the schools you're planning to apply to. Click here to download it, or click the image below.
I recommend you print it out so that you can keep a paper copy of it next to your work space.
Fill in all the schools you're already sure you want to apply to in the leftmost column. If you don't know what schools you're aiming for yet, feel free to use ones that have been suggested to you, or use schools that your friends are interested in.
I recommend that you take the time to research schools first, though, so that you have a realistic target score. Because your goal score should be targeted to the schools you are actually interested in applying to, the more accurate your list of the schools you want to apply to, the more accurate your goal score will be.
For example, if I'm interested in U Alabama, I'll do the following search:
Click on the ACT and GPA post (or the Admission Requirements post, they'll both have the information) and scroll down to find the 25th and 75th percentile composite ACT scores for admitted students. For the University of Alabama, the 25th percentile score is 21. As a quick reminder, the 25th percentile means that 25% of admits have a score at or below that number. So 21 would be a below average score for admitted students for U Alabama.
The 75th percentile score for the University of Alabama is 28. That means that students with that composite score scored better than 75% of all the other admits. So scoring at that level or above puts you in the top quarter of admits score-wise—a very competitive score! In summary, the 25th/75th percentile range describes the scores of the middle 50% of all students admitted to a particular school.
If you score at the 75th percentile for any school, you have a great chance at getting in (assuming your other credentials are appropriate for the school). If you're at the 25th percentile, you'll need to have a particularly strong application to boost your odds of getting in.
For each school on your list, google the PrepScholar ACT score information and write down the 25th and 75th percentile scores in the appropriate row for that school on your goal score sheet.
To calculate your target ACT goal score, look at the 75th percentile column. Find the highest score in that column. That's your composite score goal. If you score at the 75th percentile level for the most competitive school on your list, you'll be competitive at all your schools for test scores.
Another advantage of choosing a high goal score is that if you end up falling 1-2 points short, it's not a huge deal because you'll still be competitive for most of your schools.
You might be thinking—hey, wait! Why did I fill out that entire sheet if I was just going to pick the highest 75th percentile score? Well, the advantage of filling out all that information is that you now have it handy as a reference. You'll be able to check your ACT score against all your schools of interest as soon as you have it!
As a last step, I suggest that you do two things with your score target:
#1: Share it with your parents. This will be a helpful conversation around your personal goals and how you want to achieve your target ACT score. Plus, they can help keep you accountable throughout the preparation process!
#2: Tape it to your wall. This will keep your goal in mind, which will help keep you motivated to prepare.
Keep your goals in sight!
To make determining your goal score a little easier, here is an ACT score chart with the 25th-75th percentile composite ACT test scores for 2022 for 35 popular schools. I've also provided the acceptance rate and current U.S. News ranking to give you additional reference points as to how selective the school is.
