ACT Score Percentiles: What Your ACT Score Means

The ACT is one of two national standardized college entrance exams. Published and administered by ACT, Inc., the ACT is used by colleges and universities to determine eligibility for admission. But what do these scores mean? And what is a good score?

Your ACT score corresponds to a percentile rank, which is used to compare you to all other test takers. Your percentile rank is the percentage of other test-takers that you scored above. Thus a 74th percentile score means that you scored higher than 74% of others, placing you in the top 26%. A 99th percentile score puts you in the top 1%.

You can use this table to see what percentile an ACT score puts you in. For example, a composite score of 30 is approximately 95th percentile, and a 34 is the 99th percentile.

ACT percentile rank by score, 2026–2027

Score	Composite Percentile	English Percentile	Math Percentile	Reading Percentile	Science Percentile	STEM Percentile
36	100	100	100	100	100	100
35	99	99	99	98	99	99
34	99	97	99	97	99	99
33	98	96	98	95	98	98
32	97	95	97	93	97	97
31	96	94	96	91	96	96
30	94	93	95	89	95	95
29	93	92	94	87	93	94
28	91	90	93	85	92	92
27	89	88	91	83	91	90
26	86	87	88	81	89	88
25	83	84	84	78	86	85
24	80	81	81	75	82	81
23	77	77	77	71	77	77
22	72	74	74	66	70	73
21	68	70	71	61	65	69
20	63	64	68	56	60	64
19	58	58	64	51	54	58
18	52	54	60	47	48	52
17	47	50	53	42	41	45
16	41	46	45	37	34	36
15	34	41	33	33	27	27
14	28	34	21	28	19	17
13	20	28	11	22	14	10
12	13	23	6	16	10	5
11	6	18	3	10	6	2
10	2	11	2	5	3	1
9	1	6	1	2	2	1
8	1	3	1	1	1	1
7	1	2	1	1	1	1
6	1	1	1	1	1	1
5	1	1	1	1	1	1
4	1	1	1	1	1	1
3	1	1	1	1	1	1
2	1	1	1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Average	19.1	18.4	19.0	20.0	19.5	19.5

Each number is the percentile rank for that score: the percent of test-takers who scored at or below it. These are the “US Rank” values on ACT score reports from September 2026 through August 2027, based on ACT-tested high school graduates of 2024, 2025 and 2026. Source: ACT, Inc.

Of course, although your ACT (or SAT) score is a major factor colleges use to determine admission, there are many others, including GPA, the rigor of your high school courses, personal essays, letters of recommendation, etc.

What is a good score? Well, whatever score gives you an excellent chance at admission to the schools you’re applying to (or gets you a great scholarship). Check out a few different examples of schools at different score ranges.

Example schools by ACT score

ACT score	Schools
21–25	University of Kansas Lawrence, KS University of Missouri Columbia, MO DePaul University Chicago, IL High Point University High Point, NC
26–30	Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Auburn University Auburn, AL Baylor University Waco, TX Gonzaga University Spokane, WA
31–33	University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL William & Mary Williamsburg, VA Boston University Boston, MA Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC
33+	Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO Yale University New Haven, CT Princeton University Princeton, NJ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Cambridge, MA

ACT Score Percentiles

ACT percentile rank by score, 2026–2027

Example schools by ACT score

Want to raise your ACT score?