Going forward, the ACT says it will provide an automatically calculated superscore to all students who have taken its standardized test more than once. The nonprofit cites its own research that has determined superscoring to be the best predictor for how students will perform in college.
Superscoring involves taking the best score from each subject area (English, math, reading and science) across multiple test attempts and finding a new average between those scores. For example, if a student improved in English but worsened in math during a second test attempt, a superscore would take the new English score but keep the original math score.
Superscoring is not new; in fact, many colleges have been using the method for a while, said Dr. Krista Mattern, senior director of applied research at the ACT.
So the question becomes: Why is the ACT just now endorsing it?
Our decision “is really based on research we’ve been doing over the last couple of years, looking at different scoring methods and determining which method is most valid,” said Mattern, who explained that the ACT had been initially hesitant about endorsing superscoring because “we thought it wouldn’t be the best predictor” for how students perform in college.
Typically, the ACT has used a student’s most recent score in its research and reports, believing the most recent score would best predict a student’s first-year college performance. The ACT had previously assumed that using superscores could overestimate a student’s abilities.
But that initial assumption was wrong.
