What Is a Good ACT Aspire Score for a Sophomore

What Is a Good ACT Aspire Score for a Sophomore SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Being in 10th grade is a little like walking over a bridge. You're crossing from the less consequential testing of early high school to the world of high-stakes tests, like the SAT andthe ACT – tests that can affect your future. One of the ways you get from one side of this metaphorical divide to the other is by getting the chance to practice. For example, some students take the PSAT, which is meant to be a precursor to the SATthat they will take in their junior or senior year. Others take the ACT Aspire, a national achievement test that assesses how well students from 3rd to 10th grade are measuring up toCommon Core standards. The format, structure, and scoring of the ACT Aspire are all very different from the ACT. But, because it is designed by the same organization that creates the ACT, it can feel like a precursor to the real thing. So what’s a good score on the ACT Aspire for a sophomore? In this article, I’ll talk about different ways to think about what makes a good score, and how to tell where you rank based on the score you got. I’ll also discuss whether your 10th grade ACT Aspire score means for your future ACT score. How is the ACT Aspire Test Scored? Since the ACT Aspire is given in elementary, middle, and high schools, it stands to reason that scoring is a little different depending on your class year. I’ll talk specifically about how the test is scored for the 8th-10th graders who take it. ACT Aspire scores for each subject (English, Math, Reading, Science, and Writing) currently fall between 400 and 460. When you take this test in high school, here's what you’ll get in your score report: Your 5 individual section scores. These are your scores for each subject section of the test. A composite score. This is an unweighted average of your English, Mathematics, Reading and Science sections scores. Note that this composite score doesn't include your ACT Aspire Writing section, which is only scored individually. Several different kinds of reports about your progress. These include humanities and STEM composite scores, as well as a reading ability prognosis. If you'd like to see an example, the ACT publishes a sample of what your report will look like. The report may also include reports about the PSI pressure of your various organs. It's not really vital information, but you can't accuse them of not being thorough. What’s a Good Sophomore Score on ACT Aspire? My assumption is that sophomore year, you’re curious about what a good score is for 2 reasons. First, you’re concerned abouthow you stack up against your peers. And second, you’re wondering how you’ll do when you take the ACT for real junior year. Luckily, ACT provides a pretty thorough data for the one year that this test has been administered. This makes comparing yourself to your peers and finding any academic areas where you are lagging behind very easy. However, this data also shows that the ACT Aspire is not necessarily a great prediction model for your future ACT scores. Now, let’s examine in detail what your ACT Aspire score can show you. Comparing Yourself to the Baseline One of the goals of the ACT Aspire is to give you, your teachers, and your parents a sense of whether you are as prepared for college as you should be at this point in high school. To answer this question, you can compare your ACT Aspire score to your scores from previous years, to make sure you are consistently getting higher scores in each subject. ACT Aspire also provides minimum benchmarks scores for each test section. Each benchmark is the lowest score you need to get to demonstrate that you are on the right track in terms of your on-grade-level learning. Here is a table that shows the ACT Aspire benchmark scores for each subject for the year 2015 for grades 8-10. This table shows that, for example, if you get at least 432 on the ACT Aspire Science section as a sophomore, you’re considered to be on track to have a high probability of future success in first-year college courses. On the other hand, if your score is below the 10th grade numbers on any of the test sections, then this means that you may need outside help to catch up in these academic areas. The important thing is to just keep growingevery year. (Image:Steven Depolo/Flickr) Comparing Yourself to Your Peers Another goal of national tests like the ACT Aspire is to examine how everyone who is taking the test at the same time compares to each other. Since ACT Aspire publishes data about how students taking the test scored, we can go through the data to see how you can tell where you stand when compared to your peers. Using Your Composite Score for Peer Comparisons The composite score that you receive from ACT is a very quick snapshot of how you did on the test. This average of your individual subject scores can give you fast information about how you did relative to your peers overall. One way to evaluate your composite score is to use this table of the composite scores for 9th and 10th graders in the past year: Grade Min 25% Rank 50% Rank 75% Rank 90% Rank 95% Rank Max 9 408 414 418 423 430 435 438 10 409 415 419 426 433 438 440 This table shows rangeof students'scores. The "Min" and "Max" columns show the lowest and highest composite scores. The percentile columns showthe score you'd need to reachthe given percentile, i.e. the score at which you'd be scoringhigher than that percent of other students. In other words, for 10th grade, the lowest composite score anyone got was 409. 25% of students scored below 415. This means that if your score was 415, you did better than 25% of the studentstaking the test. Likewise, 95% of students got below a 438. This means that if your composite score was 438 or higher, you fall into the top 5% of test takers (since you did better than 95% of everyone taking the test). So what do we learn from this table? If your composite score was 419, you would fall into the middle scoring range, the 50th percentile. This means that 50% of 10th graders did worse, and 49% did better, so everyone who scored 419 falls right in the middle. What does this mean for calculating a good ACT Aspire score for a sophomore? Let’s assume that a good score is roughly at or above the 75th percentile, in other words, scoring higher than 75% of your peers. In that case, a good composite score for the ACT Aspire for sophomores is 426 or higher. Many people climb, but not everyone can reach the top. Using Your Individual Test Sectionsfor Peer Comparisons The composite score is a useful way to eyeball your status. But to figure out where you’re strong and where you're weak academically, you need to look at the scores you got on individual test sections. This much more zoomed-in approach will give you a better clue about the subjects you are learning well and the ones you need to work on more. Now, I’ll go through each ACT Aspire test subject individually to see what a good score on it would be. ACT Aspire English Percentile Rankings Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank 400 1 415 9 430 47 445 92 401 1 416 10 431 50 446 94 402 1 417 12 432 53 447 95 403 1 418 14 433 57 448 96 404 1 419 16 434 60 449 98 405 1 420 19 435 63 450 98 406 1 421 21 436 67 451 99 407 1 422 22 437 70 452 99 408 2 423 25 438 72 453 99 409 2 424 28 439 75 454 99 410 3 425 31 440 79 455 99 411 4 426 33 441 81 456 100 412 5 427 37 442 84 413 6 428 40 443 87 414 7 429 43 444 90 You can see that you don’t need to get all the questions right in order to fall into the top 1% of students. Although the exact number will change slightly from year to year, on this version of the ACT Aspire any sophomore who got 451 or above did better than 99% of the other test takers on the English section. The benchmark English section score of 428 would put you in the 40th percentile, which would mean you scored better than 40% of your peers. If we hang on to our assumption that a good score is around the 75th percentile, we can see that a score of 439 is what you need to reach that ranking. ACT Aspire Reading Percentile Rankings Score % Rank Score %Rank Score % Rank Score %Rank 400 1 411 10 422 47 433 92 401 1 412 13 423 51 434 95 402 1 413 14 424 52 435 98 403 1 414 17 425 57 436 98 404 1 415 21 426 62 437 99 405 1 416 24 427 66 438 99 406 1 417 28 428 72 439 99 407 2 418 31 429 77 440 99 408 3 419 35 430 82 441 99 409 4 420 39 431 83 442 100 410 6 421 43 432 87 You can see a similar thing about the Reading section results – quite a few of the top scores would put you in the top 1% of people taking the test. Also, notice how big a difference in the percentile rankings just one point makes. If you earned 424, you scored better than 52% of other sophomores, but if you got 425, you jump 5 percentage points to end up doing better than 57%. The Reading benchmark that ACT determined is 428, in the72nd percentile of test takers, which would also be a good score on this part of the test. ACT Aspire Math Percentile Rankings Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank 400 1 416 15 432 72 448 99 401 1 417 19 433 75 449 99 402 1 418 23 434 79 450 99 403 1 419 26 435 82 451 99 404 1 420 30 436 85 452 99 405 1 421 32 437 87 453 99 406 1 422 36 438 89 454 99 407 1 423 40 439 91 455 99 408 1 424 44 440 93 456 99 409 2 425 48 441 95 457 100 410 2 426 51 442 97 458 100 411 4 427 54 443 98 459 100 412 6 428 58 444 99 460 100 413 6 429 61 445 99 414 9 430 65 446 99 415 12 431 68 447 99 The math section has a huge spread of scores that fall into the top percentile – anyone who scored above 445 did better than 99% of their peers. The ACT Aspire benchmark for this section is 432, or the 72nd percentile. Meanwhile, a good score in the 75th percentile is 433. ACT Aspire Science Percentile Rankings Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank 400 1 413 7 426 50 439 94 401 1 414 9 427 53 440 95 402 1 415 14 428 57 441 97 403 1 416 15 429 61 442 98 404 1 417 19 430 66 443 99 405 1 418 21 431 69 444 99 406 1 419 25 432 73 445 99 407 1 420 29 433 76 446 99 408 2 421 34 434 79 447 99 409 2 422 38 435 83 448 99 410 4 423 39 436 86 449 100 411 4 424 42 437 88 412 6 425 46 438 91 The benchmark for ACT Aspire Science is 432, and this is basically the same as the good score we’ve been discussing, since it falls into the 73rd percentile of test takers. ACT Aspire Writing Percentile Rankings Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank Score % Rank 408 1 419 20 430 66 441 98 409 1 420 24 431 66 442 99 410 4 421 24 432 81 443 99 411 4 422 27 433 81 444 99 412 6 423 27 434 90 445 99 413 6 424 37 435 90 446 99 414 7 425 37 436 92 447 99 415 7 426 55 437 92 448 100 416 10 427 55 438 94 417 10 428 61 439 94 418 20 429 61 440 98 You can immediately see how differently the Writing section is scored from this table. First of all, the lowest score on this section isn’t 400 like it is for all the other sections, but 408. Also, pairs of scores get the same percentile ranking, so for example, both 410 and 411 correlate to doing better than 4% of other sophomores. Here, the benchmark score from ACT is 428, or better than 61% of everyone taking the test at the same time. Meanwhile, a good 10th grade score on Writing is somewhere between 430 and 433, which falls between the 66th and 81st percentiles. Predicting Future Success Now that you’ve seen how your score compares to the scores of all the 10th-graders who took the ACT Aspire last year, you’re probably itching to figure out whether your score on ACT Aspire means anything for the real ACT that you’ll take in your junior year. The truth is thatACT Aspire is not a particularly great predictor of your future accomplishments, though it does give you a very general sense of what you can hope to achieve. But this is fantastic news! It means that the ACT Aspire really does what it’s supposed to do – it shows you where you are now and where you need to improve. And the other great news is that dramatic improvement is clearly possible because as a sophomore, you have 1 or even 2 years in which to do it! Ok, but will the next one tell me my future ACT score? The Relationship Between ACT Aspire and ACT Scores ACT published data on 50 10th grade students – their scores oneach ACT Aspire section, and their scores on theactual ACT when they took it in 11th grade. The problem is that this data is just an unwieldy Excel spreadsheet (you can check it out here:Demonstrating the Student Growth Percentile model for grade 10 ACT Aspire to grade 11 ACT) I used the data to create some scatterplot graphs to show the whatstudents got on each ACT Aspire section and what they ended up getting on the same ACT section. The way each graph works is this: Each blue diamond point stands for one student Ifyou trace straight down from each point, you can see what that student got on ACT Aspire (in this case the Math section) If you trace straight left, you can see what that same student got when taking the ACT for real So what this graph is showing us that in general as scores from ACT Aspire Math increase (x-axis), the scores on ACT Math also tend to get somewhat higher as a group (y-axis). In other words, the swarm of diamonds goes slightly upward as we go from left to right. On a case-by-case basis, we can see that there is significant room to grow, no matter where in the score range students fall. For example, the 3 students who got432 on ACT Aspire Math (our good, 72nd percentilescore), ranged in ACT scores from 16 (approximately in the bottom 25%) to 26 (approximately in the top 15%). In the graph of English scores, we can see that your ACT Aspire score is by no means destiny. For example, look at all the students who ended up with goodACT English scores in the mid-20s. Their ACT Aspire scores ranged from 425 (below benchmark) to 447 (well above the good 75% score of 439). This same general trend of higher ACT Aspire scores leading to higher ACT scores continues when we look at the scatterplot graph for the Reading section. But the relationship is not exact. For example, the two highest scorers on the Aspire Reading section were not the top ACT scorers. Similarly, the person who scored lowest on the ACT did not get the bottom score on the Aspire. The Science section of ACT Aspire probably shows a slightly weaker correlation between high 10th grade ACT Aspire scores and subsequent high 11th grade ACT scores. Incidentally, if you’ve been following along with the visual data presentation in this article’s tables, charts, and graphs, then you’re actually getting in somegood practice for both the ACT Aspire Science section and the real ACT Science section as well! Now that you’ve seen how scatterplot graphs that show correlations look, you can be just as befuddled as I am by what happened to these 50 students on the writing section of these 2 tests. This kind of data may be a part of the reason why ACT Aspire Writing is not factored into the composite score that you get when you take the test in high school. What Does This Mean for What'sa Good Score? I think the best way to think about your scores if you’re worried about what they will eventually for the real ACT is this. First, make sure you’re scoring at least at the 10th grade benchmarks. That’s a pretty good indicator that you’re on trackwith your learning. If you’re below benchmark on any of the sections, that is a warning sign that you need help in that subject, not just to do better on ACT Aspire test but to succeed in your school year as well. Next, compareyour ACT Aspire section scores to each other. Are you scoring in the same percentile range on all 5 subjects? If there is a section (or several) that you are scoring significantly worse in, even if you’re still meeting the benchmark in that area, then this is the time to get extra help with this subject. Talk to your parents and teachers about what resources to improve your learning there are at your school, or maybe even outside of it. Should You Study for the ACT Aspire? For any test to accurately assess what you know and how well you understand when and where to apply that knowledge, the test can't simplythrow you off by its format, question style, or by the way it's administered. So in order for the ACT Aspire to actually measure how you are doing in school, it’s a great idea for you to familiarize yourself with how the test looks and feels.To that end, you should definitely read ourdetailed breakdown of what the ACT Aspire is like and the kinds of questions you’ll face on it. You should also get a sense of what taking the ACT Aspire will be like from their sample questions and computer test simulator. Go to theACT Aspire exemplar page, where you’ll find a link to the simulator and login information for all test sections and grade levels. However, other than getting a general sense of what you will see on test today, I would argue that it goes against the purpose and the benefits of ACT Aspire to study specifically for it. For one thing, this isn’t like the PSAT – no scholarships or awards are resting on the score you get.Also, the point of the test is to see whether you are where you should be in your learning. Spending a lot of effort studying for this test would easily createresults that are meaningless as an indicator of whether you have academic weaknesses that need to be worked on. Finally, there’s the matter of the rest of your class, and the rest of your grade in your school. The ACT Aspire isn’t just a diagnostic test for individual students. It’s also supposed to measure how each classroom is doing as a whole. Imagine, for example, that the ACT Aspire results come back and every single kid in your class bombed the Science section. This is no longer something that an individual student is having trouble with. Instead, this kind of result tells your teacher and school administrators that they really need to beef up how your curriculum addresses science education. And a better grounding in the foundations of science in turn will benefit you down the road when you learn how to do college-level work. Honestly, if you are really very worried about your future testing results, I think you should justtake a practice ACT instead. It’ll more accurately show you how you’d score if you took the ACT now. The one time napping is a better way to prepare for a test thanstudying. The Bottom Line The ACT Aspire tests the same 5 sections as the ACT, but is structured, formatted, and scored very differently. You’ll get scores for each of the sections individually, as well as a composite score that averages English, Reading, Math, and Science. If you aren’t meeting ACT score benchmarks, that’s a serious indicator that you need extra academic help. A good 10th grade ACT Aspire score is one that puts you in the upper 25% of your peers, and is different depending on each ACT Aspire test section. Even if you got a good 10th grade ACT Aspire score, this doesn’t necessarily mean anything in terms of predicting your real ACT score.ACT Aspire is not very good at predicting the ACT because its real purpose is to show you subject areas where you need extra help. There is no need to study for the ACT Aspire, though it would be a good idea to get familiar with the test format by checking out somesample questions. What’s Next? Thinking of jumping into the ACT world early? We have some guidance on whether you should start preparing for the ACT as a 10th grader andwhat a good sophomore ACT score would look like. Thinking about taking the PSAT as a 10th grader as well? Check out our discussion onwhat is a good PSAT score for a sophomore. Planning the rest of your high school academics? Read our articles aboutwhy it’s important to create a rigorous course load for yourself andwhether AP classes are really worth taking. Want to improve your ACT score by 4+ points? 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