I heard somewhere that colleges care more about the English ACT than they do about the Reading ACT. Is this true? It seems like the Reading ACT would line up better with the Reading SAT, so why would they not care about it as much?
I personally have never heard of a college publicly stating it about English scores more than Reading scores; however, there is actually some data to back up this policy. An independent (non-ACT-funded) study done in 2011 by Bettinger et al found that ACT English and Math scores do a good job of predicting how well a student will do in college, while ACT Reading and Science scores don't seem to have any relationship to college academic performance. So I could see how a college would care more about ACT English scores than about Reading scores.
For the most part, though, colleges are going to consider your ACT composite score along with all of your section scores (English, Math, Reading, Science), not just single out particular section scores to focus on. The only exception I can think of is if you're applying to a specific program like a humanities program (where they may care more about your English and Reading subscores) or an engineering or pre-med program (where they may care more about Math and Science subscores).
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