Think you did horribly on the ACT? Need to cancel your scores? Or are you just wondering what you would do if you ran into an emergency on test day?
In this guide, we'll cover three actions you can take to deal with a bad ACT score: canceling scores, stopping college score reports, and deleting existing scores. Likely you would only need to use one or two of these methods if you run into trouble, but we will cover all three to make sure you know all of your options.
Option 1: Canceling ACT Scores on Test Day
If you don't think you did well on the ACT, your first option is to cancel your scores. It's the most drastic option you can take if you think you did poorly on the ACT, and it stops your exam from even being graded.
What Does Canceling Your Scores Do?
If you cancel your scores, this means your test won't be graded and you won't get a score report. Students usually do this if something unexpected happens during the test– for example they get suddenly sick or an emergency pops up.
Canceling your scores does not come with a refund, so we only recommend doing this in an extreme situation. You should only cancel your scores if you can't finish the test.
Don’t cancel your scores just because you feel bad about your performance. Why not? Since you already paid for the test, if you were able to finish it, you might as well wait and see your test scores. Lots of students walk out of the test center feeling like they bombed the ACT, but they're often pleasantly surprised by their scores. You might be one of them. Plus you can learn about your performance from the score report, which is helpful if you decide to retake the ACT. And if your scores really are terrible, you can delete them later on (a process we'll explain later in this post).
Finally, know that most schools do not require you to send all your ACT scores. In fact, you will need to send individual score reports to each school. You can take the ACT up to six times, and you don't need to send your lower ACT scores to schools.
Our advice if you think you did poorly would be to wait for your score report but delete your college score recipients, which we will explain below.
How Do You Cancel Your ACT Scores?
You can only cancel your ACT score on the day of the exam, while you're still at the test center. In order to do this, tell the exam proctor to void your scores before you leave the test center.
This will stop your test from being graded, and you won’t get a score. Again, only do this in extreme or unusual circumstances. If you don't tell the proctor to void your score before you leave, there is nothing you can do to stop your test from being graded.
Once you’ve broken the seal on your test booklet, that test is yours and you either need to complete it or cancel the score. If an emergency comes up right before the test, just don’t break the seal and you will be able to move your registration to a different date. You can also do this if you can't make it to the test center the day of the ACT. (You can switch your test date online using your ACT student account. You will have to pay the test date change fee, but that's cheaper than a whole new registration.)
Option 2: Getting Rid of Your College Score Recipients
Once the reports are in the mail, it's too late.
One thing you absolutely should do if you feel shaky about your ACT performance is to get rid of your college score recipients. This is different than canceling your score reports. While your ACT will still be graded, you can make sure no colleges see your scores. You can always send the score reports later if it turns out you did well (although you'll need to pay for those score reports).
The ACT will send up to four score reports out to colleges of your choice for free as part of your test registration. You can cancel these reports up to the Thursday after your test.
If you’re worried that your performance was bad, simply log onto your ACT Student account and delete those college score recipients. This guarantees no scores will be sent to anyone, unless you choose to send the scores later on.
You have until the Thursday after the ACT to edit or delete colleges from that list. After that, the score reports will be sent no matter what. So if you complete the ACT but think you did poorly, simply delete the colleges off your score sending list so they won’t see your score.
Option 3: Deleting ACT Test Records
If you end up with an ACT score you’re not happy with, aside from making sure it’s not sent to colleges, you can also delete the scores from the ACT’s records.
In order to cancel your existing ACT scores, contact the ACT online and ask to delete your test record from a specific date. They will then send you back a form that you can use to delete the test record.
This can permanently remove a bad test score from your record. However, if you took the ACT as part of state or district testing, it can’t be deleted. This method only works for testing you signed up for and paid for yourself.
Bottom Line
If you’re feeling really sick or an emergency pops up the morning of the ACT, the smartest thing to do is to no-show and use your test registration for a later test date.
If you start your test but are unable to finish, void your scores before you leave the test center to make sure a score report isn’t created.
If you don’t void your scores, make sure to delete your college score recipients by the Thursday after the ACT to make sure your score isn’t sent to colleges.
And finally, if you get your score and decide you don’t like it, it can be deleted from ACT’s records. As long as you're aware of these options, you can make sure colleges only see the scores you want them to.
What’s Next?
Need to prep for the ACT, ASAP? Read our guide to making massive point improvements in just 10 days.
Need more help on the ACT? Get a guide to must-know ACT Vocab and learn how to write an ACT essay, step-by-step. Also read a guide to each section on the ACT: English, Math, Reading, and Science.
So there's no guessing penalty on the ACT, but that doesn't mean you should guess wildly and without a strategy. Read our guide to guessing wisely on the ACT to maximize your score.
