Are you wondering what to do about the ACT Science section? Have you considered signing up for the science section? Are you unsure whether you should be taking it or not taking it? In this blog, I’m going to talk about the ACT Science Section Policy at the top 51 schools. I’m also going to touch briefly on whether you can superscore between legacy and enhanced versions of the ACT.
The first thing that I’m going to talk about is the ACT Science Test Policy. And I know there’s been a lot of confusion because you’re asking if you should take the science test or not. And obviously it’s a lot of work for you to sit down and look up the individual policy of every school. So, I’ve done it for you, at least for the top 51 or so schools. Obviously if there are schools that aren’t on my list, they probably have some kind of policy, and you should Google that or look it up if that’s on your college list. But this is at least a start.
Won’t Look
The first schools that I’m going to start with are the schools that will not look at your science section at all. So if these are your dream schools, you don’t have to take the science section. And that’s Georgia Tech University and Virginia Tech. While Georgia Tech is test required, they do not use the science or the writing section in any of their admissions decisions. Virginia Tech, on the other hand, is test-optional. But if they look at your test score, they refuse to look at anything but English and math. Why? Well, there was a study done a while back that showed that the English and math sections are the most predictive of college success of all of the sections of the ACT and that the other sections—reading and science—tend to not be as predictive. So, Virginia Tech probably read that study and said, we’re not looking at those. And one final, less considered school is the University of Georgia. The University of Georgia only focuses on the ACT English and Math. So like Virginia Tech, if you’re applying to the University of Georgia, you really shouldn’t worry about the science section, and I wouldn’t even take it.
Required
Now, let’s talk about schools where the science section is required. It comes as no surprise to me that at the top of the required list is Georgetown. Georgetown is notorious for wanting lots of test scores. They want every score you’ve ever had. It is the only university I know of in the United States that basically demands that you send every sitting you have ever done of the SAT or ACT, and that includes the science section. In addition, they are requiring that you take the science section. Georgetown does not use the new ACT Superscore optional reports. They state, “Please send all individual ACT scores to our office from each ACT test administration, as we are not a score choice school.” So, not only is it required, but they will not superscore. So if your goal was to try to superscore at Georgetown by taking it once without the science and then another time with, that’s not really the path to Georgetown. They will look at everything, but they’re not officially super scoring. The second school that requires the science section is Boston University. Boston University says that “we recalculate a new composite score using the highest score from each section regardless of the test date.” So they are super scoring, and Boston University is test-optional. So it’s a bit ironic that they’re test-optional, but if you do take the test, you better take the science section.
Recommended
Let’s talk about schools where taking the science section is recommended. Duke University is recommended, particularly for those interested in the STEM fields. Another school that encourages students to submit it for STEM fields is Carnegie Mellon. And finally, Johns Hopkins mentions that if you take the Science or the Writing section and you do well in them, that could help your application, even though they’re not necessarily recommended again. So there are three schools on that recommended side that you might want to think about.
Optional
Everything else is essentially optional, but I’m going to add a little bit of color here on the optional for Princeton. Princeton is science section optional, but you have to submit the science score if you’re submitting an April 2025 or earlier score or if you took the science section. So basically if you submit your ACT score to Princeton and it includes a Science section, you can’t just hide the science section. Princeton is not kosher with that. Exams taken prior to April 2025 should be reported with all four sections. They don’t want you picking and choosing. Though they may focus on the highest scores, they do not officially announce that they are super scoring, and they want you to report all four sections from every test date that you took. So, you have to report all of those things if you’re self-reporting, which means it is not science optional if you took the science section. You can’t just hide it.
Okay, let’s talk through where we know the science section is optional, according to officially published or emailed to us information. MIT, Stanford, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Rice, University of Notre Dame, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Southern California, Tufts, Boston College, Purdue, Harvard, University of Texas at Austin, U of I Urbana Champaign, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rutgers, New Brunswick, Texas A&M, Northwestern, Caltech, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, U Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Wash U St. Louis, Emory University, NYU, Ohio State, University of Rochester, Maryland College Park, University of Washington, Wake Forest, Case Western, Lehigh, University of Florida, and University of Michigan. So for all of those, the science section is optional. In fact, the science section is optional far more often than the entire test is optional.
Superscoring Between Legacy and Enhanced
Okay, now I’m going to move on to talking about superscoring between the legacy and the enhanced version of the ACT. So one question that I get sometimes from parents and students is, can we superscore across the two different versions of the test? Is that allowed? And if so, what happens? Well, one thing that happens from ACT officially is that their official superscore that they send out with their superscore report knocks out the science section. So, if you took the test before the enhanced ACT, your composite may have included the science section. If you then went and retook the exam, you may get a composite that’s a lower superscore than your superscore composite before the science section was nixed from that composite score. If that happens, ACT generally will email you and be like, do you want us to restore your higher superscore with the science included, which is a decision you can make. But all in all, most of the time, what’s happening is schools are either super scoring the ACT or they’re not. The individual nitty-gritty of how the science section is dealt with—there’s some nuance there. Some schools are doing the composite without the science, but they look at your science section score on its own. Some schools are recalculating to include the science section. But bottom line, the thing I think to be concerned about is whether you can superscore at all on the ACT.
What I’m going to do is just go through the schools that do not superscore the ACT. First on my list is Harvard. They’re not superscoring the ACT; they do superscore the SAT, but not the ACT. They do evaluate your application, noting the highest test scores in each section across test dates. So if you send multiple test dates, they’re going to focus on the top scores, but they’re not going to superscore. So you also want to have a really strong composite in a single sitting, ideally. Georgetown is not super scoring. Georgetown just wants you to send everything. I don’t even know what to say about Georgetown except send lots of test scores. UT Austin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Rutgers, New Brunswick, Texas A&M, and Carnegie Mellon are not superscoring the ACT. So you can’t just do that super-scory thing. You have to send a complete, full, single ACT session sitting to those schools. And that’s something to keep in mind as you go through this process. You think about whether you should retake the science or whether you should cut out the science right now because you got everything else in gear.
And that’s about all I’m going to cover for today. You can always look up this information for whatever colleges you’re applying to, and I encourage you to do that so that you better understand the choices you’re making as you submit. Good luck, you guys, and let me know how your test prep is going!
