Many students who plan to take the ACT wonder how their scores will make it to their chosen colleges and universities. Read on to learn all you need to know to send your ACT scores to schools, including the types of reports available, who you can and can’t send them to, how much it costs, and more.

Types of ACT Score Reports

Several different score reports are generated when you take the ACT.

Student Report:

This is sent to your MyACT account 2 to 8 weeks after you take the exam. The report will include your ACT scores and some college and career planning information.

High School Report:

This report contains the same information as the student report and is delivered within the same timeline.

College Report:

This is the report that is sent to the colleges of your choice based on your requests. In addition to the scores, this report also contains the grades you report for up to 30 high school classes and may include predictions of your performance in various courses of study. The delivery timeframe depends on the schools receiving the reports and when those reports were requested. The student and high school reports are automatically sent. You just need to focus on sending the college reports out, and that process depends on when you are sending them.

Sending Scores When Registering for the ACT

Your first opportunity to send your ACT scores to school happens before you even take the test. When you register for a national ACT test date, you can select schools that will receive your results when they are ready. This approach works best if you expect to get scores you know you want to share and you know which schools you want to send them to.

Here are some things to know:

• You can select up to four schools as part of your registration fee.
• You can add up to two more schools for $18.50 per report when you register.
• You must know the correct school codes for your chosen institutions.
• If you need to change a recipient immediately after testing, you have until noon on Thursday after the test date to do so.

Sending Scores After Taking the ACT

There are many reasons you may wait until you receive your score before selecting schools that will receive it.

• Your list of schools may not be finalized at the time of registration.
• You want to take the ACT more than once before sending scores, especially if you know some schools on your list use superscoring .
• You need to send scores to more schools than you listed at registration.
• You may need to send the college report to scholarship committees.

ACT’s website has a lot of good information about accessing and sending your ACT scores.

These are the main points to note:

• Your MyACT account is where you will request that reports be sent to institutions.
• Score reports can be sent to schools with valid school codes or to scholarship committees.
• If you’ve taken the ACT more than once, you can choose to send a superscore or one from a single test event. Make sure to research the application requirements for each school to ensure you are sending the correct report.
• As of spring 2024, the cost per test date per report is currently $18.50 if the test was taken within the past 3 years. Score report requests for tests more than 3 years old will incur an additional fee.
• If a student receives a fee waiver for test registration, the waiver covers one high school report and up to six college reports. After registering, the student may request unlimited score reports at no cost.

Now you are an expert at sending ACT scores to colleges. Hopefully, you can send them to four of your top schools with your ACT registration, but if you aren’t ready at that time or need to send reports to additional schools, you can easily do so through your ACT online account. Just grab your school codes and those scores you worked so hard for and send them out into the world!