With an ACT sitting just behind us, allow me to prepare you for a circumstance that you are hopefully NOT currently in—but one that it’s vital to have a strategy for, just in case you do.
That circumstance is this: you sit for the test, and it goes extremely, undeniably badly, leaving you certain that your score is not going to be usable. Curious how you can cut off that score at the pass—before it’s even calculated, let alone seen by the colleges on your list?
Never fear, your friendly standardized testing expert is here, and I’m going to explain each step of the process.
Article Contents
2. How to know if you should cancel your ACT score
3. Step-by-step guide to canceling your ACT score?
a. Keeping an ACT from being graded
b. Change which colleges receive your ACT scores
c. Deleting your ACT score records
4. A final caution about canceling your ACT score
5. Conclusion
Video version of this article:
How to know if you should cancel your ACT score?
Before we even get into how to “nope” out of your score, you want to make sure that nixing the whole thing is what actually benefits you the most. In fact, it’s such an important question that I wrote a whole post on the subject. Before you do anything else, please take a deep breath and read that post.
Still here? Ok, having reviewed that list of valid reasons why one can cancel one’s score….are you positive that your reason falls on that list (and that you’re not just having a temporary anxious meltdown)?
If the answer is “Yes, Kristina, something very dramatic happened to me during the test—e.g., I spent twenty minutes in the bathroom throwing up—and so I’m CERTAIN that I must cancel,” then you can proceed to this subject, our main focus today.
Guide to Canceling Your ACT Score
Now, please allow me to walk you through each step of the process. The ACT actually offers you a few different options on how to proceed. You can either:
Cancel your scores before it’s even calculated;
Change or delete which colleges will be automatically sent your scores; or even
Permanently delete your scores from the ACT’s record!
The following sections will break down what each of those choices means—AND how to actually go about them.
Keeping an ACT from Being Graded
This option means that you freeze your ACT in its tracks, before it’s even graded. That means your score NEVER gets recorded in the first place! So, if you experience a score-destroying emergency during the test, you can:
A) Not go to the testing center at all. Instead, go online to ACTstudent.org and pay a $44 test date change fee. (Mind you, this is still less money than losing the $65-$132 you paid for the registration fee, depending on how many sections of the test you sign up for and whether there's a late fee!) You won’t even have taken the test to begin with, so your score is not only canceled—it never existed.
B) Travel to the test center only to realize then and there that you’re too ill/otherwise compromised to take the test. In this case, DON’T BREAK THE TEST BOOKLET SEAL (or start the test, if you’re taking it on a computer). Instead, tell the proctor immediately that you won’t be taking the test, and you’ll be able to move your registration to a different test date, again for a small fee (still cheaper than forfeiting your registration fee).
C) You show up to the test, break the seal/start the test, but sudden sickness/emergency THEN prevents you from finishing the test. You should TELL THE PROCTOR RIGHT AWAY TO VOID YOUR SCORE. This must happen BEFORE you leave the testing center, on the day of the test. You will lose your registration fee, but this is better than having a score report on your record for a half-completed test.
2. How to Change Which Colleges Receive Your ACT Scores
If you go to the testing center, break the seal of/start taking your test, and leave without actually asking the proctor to void your scores, your ACT will be graded. However, if you have good reason to believe you may have done very badly on the test, you’re not without recourse. In fact, there’s still something you can do right away to fix the situation.
You see, part of your registration fee includes sending that test date’s scores not only to YOU, but also to up to four colleges, for free. And happily, you can change or even delete your full list of college score recipients up until the Thursday after your ACT test date!
In this case, your job is to log onto your ACTStudent.org account and edit or delete those colleges that you do NOT want to see your scores. That may well mean deleting all the colleges you’d originally listed.
If you receive your scores back and they’re better than you’d thought they’d be, you can still send score reports to as many colleges as you wish for $19 per score report per school. (In other words, if you have 10 colleges and want them all to see both February AND April scores, you’d send a total of 20 score reports: February scores for all 10 colleges and April scores for all 10 colleges. 10 + 10 = 20; 20 x $19.00 = $380.)
3. Deleting your ACT Score Records
This is a little-known fact, but did you know you can completely DELETE your ACT score from a particular test date? This is the option you might consider only if you got a catastrophically low score AND you have a college (or colleges) on your list that “require all scores” to be submitted to them. (Otherwise, you don’t need to worry about that: you can just opt not to send the sub-optimal score to your college list.)
In this case, your marching orders are to submit a written request to the ACT. You can do this either online or by phone:
1) Online: Go to this link on the ACT’s website and fill out the webform. Select “Scoring” from the drop-down menu under “Select Your Issue,” and in the text box asking you to “Describe Your Issue,” say that you want to delete a test date record.
2) Phone: Call the ACT at 319-337-1270 and speak to a representative about canceling your score.
In both cases, the ACT will email you a form that you can fill out to delete the offending score from your record.
While this can permanently and irrevocably delete a “yikes” ACT score from your record, please note that you can only do this to ACT test dates that you paid for yourself. In other words, if you took the ACT as part of state or district testing—and the state or district paid for it—sorry, pal. You cannot delete that test date’s score.
Also, if you already sent that score to a college, deleting the score cannot undo it—unfortunately, that score’s on its way to the school, and beyond your control.
A Final Caution About Canceling Your ACT Score
You do not want to cancel your ACT score unless you really, really have to. If a TRUE medical or other kind of emergency prevents you from taking the test, simply be a no-show or tell the proctor, and change your test date for a small fee online.
If you begin to take the ACT and literally faint in the middle of a Reading question, or your calculator dies and you can’t finish the Math section, tell the proctor immediately to void your test score—before you leave the building.
If there’s no emergency, and you merely feel (or think you “know”) that you didn’t do so well, believe me—do NOT cancel your scores. You might end up logging onto your account and edit/delete your college score recipients by the following Thursday…and finding yourself pleasantly surprised.
And finally, if you truly DID perform terribly—and ONLY IF you have colleges that require sending all test scores—you may follow the process to have that test date’s scores permanently deleted from your ACT test records.
Conclusion
If you are still unclear which choice of action to take, take another look at my “should I cancel my ACT/SAT score” post.
And if you still have questions about this or any other parts of the standardized testing process, reach out to me. I’ve been offering one-on-one test prep for fifteen years, now—and getting my students their highest scores by a long shot.
