hi lillian,

it completely depends on what schools and scholarships you are interested in applying for. for more information, see the article “act scores: everything you need to know.” here is an excerpt from that article:
“for most students, scoring above average, 21 or higher, is a good score. for those applying to elite colleges, scores in the 94th percentile (30+) or even the 98th percentile (33+) are good scores”

hi kate,

those are great questions, and i can tell that you are a very involved and concerned parent. that’s fabulous! i applaud you.

we are really more of test prep experts than college admissions experts, so i would recommend that you contact each school that you’re thinking of applying to directly. colleges and universities can have slightly different rules, but each admissions department will be able to tell you whether they will be willing to accept those scores in a few years.

some students do find it easier to get a high score on the act than the sat, while others feel the opposite. a great way to tell whether the act might be a good option for your son would be to take a full-length practice test under accurate testing conditions (no phone, no music, no distractions, each section timed accurately) and see how that goes. magoosh has a free 2022世界杯入门名单 that you can use.

your son did a great job on his sat, and i hope this advice helps you plan for the next steps on his testing journey. 🙂

can we use this grade 8 sat score for college application? does it worth to retake the sat later ? the sat curves recently seem getting very sensitive and unpredictable. instead of retaking the sat in high school and hoping to get 20+ points more, we are thinking of taking act at the end of grade 10. does this make any sense ?

he also got a 800 on sat subject math 2 when he was in grade 8. can this score be used as one of the subject tests for college application later ?

thank you for your advice.

great question! the key issue here is what the score choice policy is. you can read about this here: //www.catharsisit.com/hs/sat/2016/colleges-see-all-sat-scores/ some schools require that you send all scores and others don’t. you can check with cornell now whether or not that’s true, and when you expand your list, you can check those schools too. another question i’d ask a school that requires all scores is how seriously they rate a low score if it was in eighth grade. my instinct is that they wouldn’t necessarily hold it against you, but that’s just a guess. our job is to get you the high score, and questions about how they’re viewed in admissions are best sent to the schools specifically 🙂

hi jennifer,

congrats to your son! that’s a great score, especially for an 8th grader. now, with regard to keeping the score it’s really up to you. it is impressive to get that score at his age. but, at the same time, in high school, your son is likely to potentially score much higher, and you don’t really need to have this score in your official record as you’ll likely use you high school score for college purposes. as such, it really is a matter of personal preference! again, great job! 😀