I got a handful of emails and texts from worried students and parents this week, all with the same problem: the ACT score that was supposed to be in MyACT had just vanished.
If that’s you, here’s the situation.
This past winter and spring, a lot of Ohio high schools ran the ACT as an online school-day administration. I had a number of students go that route. Those kids are the ones caught up in this. On May 13, ACT pulled scores from this spring’s online school-day testing and said they’re recalculating them, with new numbers back in MyACT no later than June 2.
The thing to tell your kid first: no recalculated score will come in lower than the original. ACT has been explicit on this point in writing to districts. The new number either matches the old one or goes up. So nobody is losing points, and no scholarship that was within reach a week ago is now out of reach.
So what actually happened? ACT ran its standard post-test analysis on the spring online school-day results, and the scores didn’t sit where they normally do. Not a problem with the test forms. Not a problem with how the kids tested. The conversion step, which translates “you got X questions right” into your 1-36 scaled score, apparently went off the rails. ACT pulled the scores rather than leave bad numbers in place.
Two and a half weeks, give or take, until the corrected ones show up. Students don’t have to do anything to get them. ACT is automatically resending updated reports to every college, scholarship organization, and high school the student previously selected.
Who’s actually affected
Online school-day testers from this spring. Paper testers aren’t affected. Saturday national administration testers aren’t affected. By ACT’s count, fewer than 5% of affected students are seniors, which means the vast majority of these scores belong to juniors and sophomores who still have a long runway before applications are in motion. ACT says it’s contacting the colleges and scholarship programs of senior-aged affected students directly.
Locally, I can confirm Upper Arlington and Olentangy got the notification from ACT. Any district that ran online school-day testing this spring is going to be in the same boat, and state education departments have been looped in. If your district hasn’t said anything yet, give it a few days.
What to do depending on where your kid is
Juniors and sophomores: nothing. Wait for June 2. There’s no useful action to take in the meantime. Trying to plan around a hypothetical recalculated score is a waste of energy, and you’ll have the real number soon enough.
Seniors with applications already in: send a one-line note to each college and scholarship program on your list saying the ACT score is being reissued and an updated report is on the way. ACT will resend automatically, but the quick email from the student helps admissions match the new report to the existing application. Most schools already know about this and aren’t going to hold the delay against anyone.
Anyone considering a summer retest: late registration for the June 13 national ACT is open through May 29. Plenty of students retake the ACT at least once anyway, and the recalculation doesn’t really move the question of whether another test makes sense.
A couple of side notes for the parents who’ve been emailing me
The Reddit threads have a lot of theories about which section caused this. ACT hasn’t said. Until corrected scores are out, all of that is speculation, and I wouldn’t read tea leaves on it.
And one editorial point I keep making to families who ask. When students have a choice between paper and online for a Saturday ACT, I almost always steer them toward paper. The paper test has been running for decades with a much longer operational track record. Online introduces failure modes that paper just doesn’t have. This one included. For school-day testing the district picks the format, so this advice is really for the Saturday route. Whatever number lands in MyACT in the coming weeks will be valid and treated by colleges exactly like any other ACT score. Nobody needs to footnote it on an application.
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