Wyatt R.: His ACT Fell From a 26 to a 22. Then It Climbed to a 30 Superscore.

Wyatt’s ACT went the wrong way first.

As a sophomore he did three months of in-person tutoring and scored a 26. Then a year passed with no prep, and when he tested again as a junior he got a 22. His Math had fallen from a 26 to a 19. The test had also moved to computer, and he walked into that format with no strategy for it.

So when his family came to us in May, they weren’t starting from zero. They were starting from a score that had dropped four points, which is its own kind of discouraging.

What the score was for

Wyatt wants to study criminology and then go to law school. A 30 would put him in range for scholarships and honors programs like Iowa’s, and a 32 or 33 would let him reach for schools like Northwestern.

What his family kept coming back to was simpler than any one school. They wanted Wyatt choosing his college from a list of real options, without having to settle for whichever one would take him.

A coach who teaches the way he learns

The tutoring that got him to a 26 had worked for a reason. That tutor built real rapport with him and used a method Wyatt responded to: he worked through practice questions on his own, and then they went back over how he’d thought about each one. So we matched him with a coach, Owen, who works the same way.

Where the 30 came from

Wyatt took the ACT in July and again in September. A superscore takes a student’s best score in each section from different test dates, and most colleges accept it.

His superscore is a 30, eight points above the 22 he came in with. It takes English 34 from September, Reading 30 from July and Math 26 from his sophomore test. He scored a 29 on the September test on its own.

That 30 is the number he named in May for scholarships and honors programs. Math, the section that fell the furthest, is the one with the most room left.