ACT Score Chart

The Full ACT Score Chart, Section by Section

The table below is a typical ACT score chart built from the curves used across many past test forms. Find your raw score, the number of questions you answered correctly, in the column for that section, then read across to see the scaled score it lines up with on any given row.

Figures reflect a typical raw to scale curve. Your official ACT conversion chart for a specific test date may shift by a point or two per section.

How to Read an ACT Score Chart

Every ACT score chart works the same way underneath, even though the numbers shift slightly by test form. You start with your raw score, meaning how many of the multiple choice questions you got right in a section, out of 75 for English, 60 for Math, or 40 each for Reading and Science. There's no penalty for a wrong answer and no penalty for guessing, so your raw score is simply your total number correct.

That raw score gets mapped to a scaled score between 1 and 36 using the chart for that section. This is the step most students skip past without realizing how much it matters. Near the top of the chart, one or two missed questions can pull your scaled score down by a full point, because so few students reach the highest raw scores that each question carries more weight there.
In the middle of the chart, the curve flattens out, so missing three or four questions might only cost you a single scaled point, sometimes none at all. This is exactly why an ACT score chart is not a straight line from raw score to scaled score, and why guessing your score without checking the actual chart tends to be inaccurate at the high and low ends.

Once you have all four scaled scores, English, Math, Reading, and Science, your composite is the average of the four, rounded to the nearest whole number. A set of scaled scores like 32, 28, 33, and 31 averages to 31, which becomes your reported composite.

Using the Chart Section by Section

English

With 75 questions, English has the most room for small mistakes to matter less. Missing five or six questions in the low-30s range on this ACT scoring chart often costs less than a single scaled point, though the same number of misses near the top of the chart, in the low 70s, can cost two or three points.

Math

Math has only 60 questions, so each one carries more weight than an English question does. The curve on the Math section of most conversion charts tends to be a bit steeper in the middle range, meaning a handful of careless errors shows up more clearly in your scaled score than the same number of errors would on English.

Reading and Science

Both sections have 40 questions and similar curves, though Science often has a slightly steeper drop near the very top of the chart. Missing just one or two questions out of 40 on Science can sometimes mean the difference between a 36 and a 34, which is worth knowing if pacing across the seven passages tends to be your biggest challenge.

Turning the Chart Into a Study Plan

A scoring chart is most useful once you stop treating it as a lookup table and start using it to set targets. If you're sitting at a 24 composite and want to reach a 27, look at where each section's scaled score currently falls on the chart, then check how many additional raw score points that section needs to move up.
Sections near the middle of the chart, where the curve is flatter, often need more raw score improvement per scaled point than sections near the top, where a couple of extra correct answers can swing your score noticeably.

This is also where a plain ACT scoring chart falls short on its own. It tells you what a raw score converts to, but it doesn't tell you which section is realistic to improve fastest. Pair the chart with the ACT score calculator after every practice test, track your raw scores by section over time, and you'll start to see which section responds best to focused practice rather than guessing based on the chart alone.
For more detail on how the underlying scoring process works, including the optional writing test and how colleges read your composite, see how ACT scoring works.