What To Do When You Register For The Act With Extra Time

When yous register for the Human action exam, you'll be asked to provide much more than data than only your name and accost. You'll also be asked to make full out details on your classes, grades, and extracurricular activities. ACT gathers this data for its own inquiry. 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 lot provide forth two axes of involvement—Information 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 higher will likely change as y'all're exposed to more opportunities. When reviewing the written report, nigh students ignore this section altogether, noticing that it simply confirms what they already knew about themselves or that information technology doesn't actually capture the full scope of their interests.

Higher and Career Planning only appears on the Pupil Score Report [y'all can read more about interpreting your Student Score Written report here]; an entirely different report goes to colleges when you lot request your scores to be sent. In fact, the supplementary information you supply takes upwardly more one-half of the ACT College Written report.

To get a handle on what higher admission officers see, let'southward break downwardly Ann Taylor's sample Higher Report ACT provides.

The commencement third of the College Report displays the same scaled and detailed scores that students come across on their own reports. The i departure is that US Rank is immediately followed by Institutional Rank, significant Human activity highlights your score in relation to those of the college'south most recent freshman class.

To the correct of these scores, nether "Information Reported past the Educatee," the first thing Act lists is "College Choice." In the sample, University of Omega is listed as student Ann Taylor's 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 grade, Ann would likely take the offering.

We've written almost the concept of demonstrated interest [elsewhere on our blog], but hither'southward the full general idea: schools are looking for ways to identify students who are really serious virtually accepting access offers. Designating your top school as #1 might seem to exist an constructive strategy, only what message are you sending to the admission role of your 4th-choice school?

Most students don't realize they're demonstrating interest when they fill out the examination registration and select the schools where they desire their four included reports sent. Here'due south an image of the registration screen:

Note that when yous add together a score report, ACT's registration site asks you to set the priority for each school. The level of priority gets reported as "Pick" on the written report to the school.

Similarly, you are asked to select from a series of preferences about the kind of higher you may want to attend. Aslope your scores, your preferences are reported to each school. If yous select a public 4-year co-ed university in California, that all-women liberal arts college in Massachusetts where yous're also applying might heighten an eyebrow.

The back of the report lists more information that y'all've given ACT: high school, subjects studied, extracurricular activities, background, financial aid, enrollment and housing plans, interests, and even weaknesses. Some of these information points are more fraught then others, but all could be used past a school trying to create a well-balanced freshman form.

The ACT Higher Report concludes with a section called "Chances of Success at [University]." In order for college entrance exams to exist accustomed as valid, they accept 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 you're applying participates in ACT Enquiry Services, ACT volition display your hazard of receiving a C or ameliorate and a B or better in a variety of classes. These chances are based on how others with your score accept performed in these classes in the by. In Ann's sample instance, 49% of First-Time Students with her score range received a B or better, then the assumption is that Ann shares a 49% gamble of receiving that same grade.

Colleges might apply this data 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.

Yous may find that the best approach is to decline the four score reports included in your registration then that you tin avert ranking schools. Though you lot will incur additional charges, you will proceeds more command over what exactly gets sent if you lot wait to send until later on you've received your scores. Similarly, you may notice that leaving some preferences set to "no preference" will bear witness greater flexibility if you lot're applying to many different kinds of schools.

The sample College Written 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 meet all of this information doesn't necessarily mean they'll factor it into their decisions. There's a real chance that they merely scrape your scores into their application software and completely ignore your stated interests and profile.

In other words, it's not worth your time and energy to worry about trying to answer each question in the fashion you imagine your summit colleges would want, but information technology's worth being enlightened that all of the schools where you employ volition see the data y'all reveal.