Let's talk about ACT scores! We're going to explain how ACT scoring works now that the composite has changed, walk through ACT percentiles and talk about what constitutes a good, bad and average ACT score. We'll also lay out the median test scores at popular colleges, helping you target schools that match your score. Let's go!
Table of Contents
1. What's a good ACT score?
2. How ACT scoring works
3. ACT Percentiles for 2026
4. Median ACT score by college
5. Dealing with a low ACT score
Apologies in advance for totally
copping out on this answer, but a good score is a score that gets you into the college you want to go to and gets you
scholarship money if you need it.
That sounds like a non-answer, but it's really the only answer that is useful. Plenty of students would love to have a 28, but if your
goal is to get into Harvard, that is probably not a good enough score. But if your goal is to get into a lot of state universities, that
same 28 will do the trick.
Further, it's important to distinguish between "good score" and "good score for you." Students come at this thing from all sorts of different
abilities and opportunities. Like many things in life, you are going to be more successful if your standard for success is grounded in who you
are as a student and what you can personally do, not what the person next to you can do.
Okay, okay. So that is all good, but let's actually try to throw some scores out and see where they fit into the big picture. We are going to
talk about percentiles (What percentage of students are eating your dust?), average scores at various universities (Which colleges will roll out the red carpet for you?) and how much improvement most students can realistically expect from their baseline with a little hard work (Which stars are within reach?). We will even finish up with some advice on how to approach a weak score and prevent the impending homelessness your mom is worried about.
Let's jump in.
Each section of the ACT is scored from 1 to 36, and your composite score is also on a 1-36 scale. In September 2025, the ACT had one of its biggest changes in years, kicking science out of the composite (and making it optional) and leaving just the English, Reading and Math sections to form a composite ACT score. That average is rounded to the nearest whole number, so a 27.67 becomes a 28. Most colleges don't require the Science, but if you take it, you get a separate Science score and a STEM score (which combines Math and Science). Neither one affects your composite score, though. The optional Writing test (which almost no one should take) is scored from 2 to 12 and doesn't affect your composite, either.
Without Science or Writing, the ACT takes 2 hours and 5 minutes, plus a break. Every question on the test, including Math, now has four answer choices. Here is how each section breaks down:
| Section | Questions | Time | Counts in Composite? |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 50 | 35 minutes | Yes |
| Math | 45 | 50 minutes | Yes |
| Reading | 36 | 40 minutes | Yes |
| Science (optional) | 40 | 40 minutes | No |
| Writing (optional) | 1 essay | 40 minutes | No |
One more thing to know: many colleges superscore the ACT, which means they take your best English, Math and Reading scores across all of your test dates and build a new composite from them. That makes retaking the test a lot less risky than most students think.
Before we lay out the exact percentile chart below, let's talk about a few cornerstone levels. For the class of 2026, the average ACT composite was 19.2.
The average English score was 18.2, the average math score was 19.0 and the average reading score was 19.8. A 34 or 35 puts you in the 99th percentile,
and a perfect 36 is the 100th. A 28 is the 91st percentile, and the 75th percentile, which means you are doing better than three out of four students,
is right around a 23. The middle of the pack, the 50th percentile, is about an 18.
Below you can find the percentiles for the full range of ACT composite scores. ACT calls these "national ranks," and they compare you to recent high school
graduates who actually took the ACT. The current ranks are based on the graduating classes of 2024, 2025 and 2026, and they are the ones used on score reports
for tests taken from September 2026 through August 2027. Because those classes tested both before and after the composite change, the ranks blend the old
four-section composite with the new three-section one.
| ACT Composite Score | Percentile |
|---|---|
| 36 | 100 |
| 35 | 99 |
| 34 | 99 |
| 33 | 98 |
| 32 | 97 |
| 31 | 96 |
| 30 | 94 |
| 29 | 93 |
| 28 | 91 |
| 27 | 89 |
| 26 | 86 |
| 25 | 83 |
| 24 | 80 |
| 23 | 77 |
| 22 | 72 |
| 21 | 68 |
| 20 | 63 |
| 19 | 58 |
| 18 | 52 |
| 17 | 47 |
| 16 | 41 |
| 15 | 34 |
| 14 | 28 |
| 13 | 20 |
| 12 | 13 |
| 11 | 6 |
| 10 | 2 |
| 9 | 1 |
| 8 | 1 |
| 7 | 1 |
| 6 | 1 |
| 5 | 1 |
| 4 | 1 |
| 3 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 1 | 1 |
Before we jump into ACT scores by college, it's important to point out that the median accepted score represents
roughly the middle student that got into a university. That means about half
of students did not reach that number yet still got into that university! Think about that for a second: at your target university, about half of
students did worse than the
median number you see. That should give you some hope if your score is falling short of the numbers you see.
A metric that can often be more useful is the 25th to 75th percentile score range, so we have also included that figure below. Think
of this as the middle 50% of students at a given university. If you are in that group, you are certainly competitive. Parents and students
often ask what kind of score makes a student competitive for a given university, and the short answer to this question is the 25th-percentile number
you see below.
If you can get to that number, you are competitive at a given university.
| University | Median ACT Score | 25th–75th Percentile ACT Score |
|---|---|---|
| Harvard University | 35 | 34–36 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 35 | 34–35 |
| Stanford University | 35 | 34–36 |
| Duke University | 35 | 34–35 |
| University of Virginia | 33 | 32–35 |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 32 | 29–34 |
| University of Michigan–Ann Arbor | 33 | 32–34 |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | 33 | 31–35 |
| University of Florida | 32 | 29–33 |
| University of Minnesota–Twin Cities | 29 | 26–32 |
| The Ohio State University | 30 | 27–32 |
| Penn State University (University Park) | 30 | 28–32 |
| University of Colorado Boulder | 30 | 27–33 |
| Texas A&M University | 28 | 24–32 |
| University of Arizona | 25 | 21–29 |
| Michigan State University | 28 | 25–31 |
Source: each university's most recent Common Data Set, based on enrolled first-year students who submitted scores. Many of these schools are test-optional, so their numbers reflect only students who chose to send scores.
Wouldn't it be great if every student got the score they needed to go to their dream school and get a full ride?
Unfortunately, this is not always a world built for dreamers, and some of you may not end up at the score you have in your
head. But don't despair! You can still end up as a smashing success in life, and we will give you some tips on how to deal
with that low ACT score.
There are four ways you can up your chances of getting into a great college despite a low ACT score:
Prefer to talk on the phone? Just give us a call at (866) 210-4335.
