The second option you have instead of canceling your ACT scores is to make sure the ACT score recipient list is empty. We at Damian SAT ACT Prep clearly make a differentiation between canceling the scores and getting rid of the college score recipients. While your ACT will still be graded, you can make sure no colleges see your scores. You can always send the score reports later if it turns out you did well (although you’ll need to pay for those score reports).
The ACT will send up to four score reports out to colleges of your choice for free as part of your test registration. You can cancel these reports up to the Thursday after your test.
If you’re worried that your performance was bad, simply log onto your ACT Student account and delete those college score recipients. This guarantees no scores will be sent to anyone, unless you choose to send the scores later on. You are in control in other words.
You have until the Thursday after the ACT to edit or delete colleges from that list. After that, the score reports will be sent no matter what. So, if you complete the ACT but think you did poorly, simply delete the colleges off your score sending list so they won’t see your score.
Very few students and parents know that you can make sure the test scores are forever deleted from the ACT’s records. If you get scores back and you are not happy with the scores, you can delete them from the ACT records indeed. Damian SAT ACT Prep advises students about submitting a written request to ACT. Send the letter with your name and address, and state that you wish to delete a test date record. Damian SAT ACT Prep provides the address for ACT as:
ACT Institutional Services
P.O. Box 168
Iowa City, IA 52243-0168
USA
The ACT will then send you back a form that you can use to delete the test record.
This can permanently remove a bad test score from your record. However, if you took the ACT as part of state or district testing, it can’t be deleted. This only applies for testing you signed up for and paid for yourself. The test offered at your school as part of the County School Board initiative will not be erased or deleted.
If you’re feeling really sick or an emergency pops up the morning of the ACT, the smartest thing to do is to no-show and use your test registration for a later test date.
If you start your test but are unable to finish, void your scores before you leave the test center to make sure a score report isn’t created. If you don’t void your scores, make sure to delete your college score recipients by the Thursday after the ACT to make sure your score isn’t sent to colleges.
And finally, if you get your score and decide you don’t like it, it can be deleted from ACT’s records. As long as you’re aware of these options, you can make sure colleges only see the scores you want them to.
As soon as you get your score back, compare it to the desired score requested by the colleges of your choice. It gives you a clear path to what you should do in order to get in the college of choice as well as the gap between what the colleges expect and what you can produce. From there, the decision has to cover the following aspects: more tutoring, more practice tests, more basic training to fix issues.
In the end, the decision to keep the score or delete the score is important. However, you have now an idea about what you can do and the score you can get if you would take the test again tomorrow.