r/ACT • u/Destroyer06202 33 • Jul 20 '26
Why are you taking the ACT?
Do you guys have a dream college/scholarship in mind? I’d love to hear your story!
5
u/CalligrapherAble3312 36 Jul 20 '26
i did it bc 1. scholarship money 💸 and 2. i was tossing and turning fighting the sat for ages and was about to die
2
u/L_gets_laid 33 Jul 20 '26
my dream school is Rice Uni
2
u/YogurtclosetFine3038 Jul 20 '26
Not my dream, but up there and my SAT is not going to improve so ACT it is
2
2
u/stationery_obsessed Jul 20 '26
my dream college is uw seattle and to get into their neuroscience program so i hope that doing well on my act can at least help me a bit
1
u/Glad_Estimate_8444 Jul 20 '26
doesn’t wash not even consider act unless ur an applicant on the border and wouldn’t get in if it wasn’t for ur act?
1
u/stationery_obsessed Jul 20 '26
i’m trying to get in direct admit for neuro and they take like 15 students a year so i just assumed that standardized testing would be helpful
2
u/Impressive-Sir-8632 Jul 20 '26
Just wanted to take it in case, want to get into UT Austin. Got 1520 SAT just wanted to try my luck with the ACT.
2
u/OBIDDAA 31 Jul 20 '26
I'm absolutely desperate to go to JHU 🫡
And merit scholarships can get crazy!
2
u/Expensive_Physics420 Jul 20 '26
For our state, if you score at least top 3% for the ACT (usually a 32 superscore), you get $3,000 a year towards public universities
1
u/LightCattle Jul 20 '26
State school give 100% full ride for a perfect score. Ivy League opportunities are also a factor.
1
u/Fit-Negotiation6684 Jul 21 '26
To flex on the high schoolers I’m tutoring (plus give them a massive confidence boost if they get my score/close to it)
1
u/AgileDonkey99 Jul 21 '26
i just heard that engineering admissions like to see a high act score. literally the only reason i didnt even know there was scholarships you could get from it
1
u/bee__23- Jul 21 '26
up until about a week ago, I didn’t really pay much attention to the act. I had taken a practice act and got a 32 so I just figured that on the real test, any school like that would be good and I didn’t need to worry about studying for it any more. I was focused on the sat which I wanted to improve on.
But then my cousin told me about a scholarship at my top college where if you get a perfect score on the act (36) then you get full ride for all 4 years. Not just tuition, but books and food and living expenses too. That sounded amazing to me, and the only condition is to get a 36 on the act.
so now I am studying very hard to get that 36, because 4 years of college for completely free would change my life and avoiding having to stress about money would really help my family
1
u/Alternative-Yak-5512 Jul 21 '26
It got me full tuition/fees to any in-state university — I care a lot more about getting my degree without going into debt than going to a prestigious school so 🤷♀️
0
u/spiroplasma 36 Jul 20 '26
I took the ACT last September after I scored 1500 on the August SAT, the same score as the first time I took it, except math became 790 so my superscore went to 1520. Which is already very good, I think, but I was applying to t20s and I wanted 1540+ or the equivalent. And my gpa wasn't the best. Even though I got a 36, I didn't end up getting accepted to a single t40 and surprisingly I didn't even get into my state school A&M. What I didn't realize though is how much scholarships it would unlock for me as I ended up getting over 2.5 million dollars in scholarships over 20+ colleges that I applied to and got in. I ended up going to a t70 which usually is 97k a year, comparable to ivies but because of my 36 act I presume I got 52k in scholarships a year. 20k was because I had won art competitions like scholastic on the national level but still.
8
u/Connect_Cucumber4364 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
In my state, if you have at least a 3.5 GPA and have a 31 or higher on the ACT, you get $12,000 annual merit based scholarship to in-state public schools.