ACT Writing: Rubric Scoring

The essay, or the writing section, is the fifth section of the ACT that is completely optional for students to take. 

**Note, there is a slight chance you will have to take the writing section as a requirement for college admissions or scholarships, depending on what schools you are looking to attend and/or scholarships you are trying to win. Make sure you double-check (and ideally triple-check) whether you have to take the ACT or not ✅ ✅ ✅. **

The score likely won't make or break your application as it is just one part of the puzzle, but if it is required for some sort of program that you would like to be a part of, it will because it's a requirement!

In the ACT Writing Section Essay, you’ll write a developed and organized argument essay. In the prompt, you’ll read multiple perspectives about a hotly contested issue with some background information. You’ll argue for a specific perspective in response to the prompt with clear logic and relevant evidence.

Unlike the other four sections of the ACT, your essay is not graded on a 1-36 scale. Don't worry though, we'll break down how graders will evaluate your writing section so that you'll be ready to knock it out of the park!

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📝 ACT Essay Scoring

The first thing to know is that two people will read over your essay, so it’s not just the opinion of one person who will decide your fate 😈. This is a similar format to the grading used for AP Exam Free Response Questions. In the end, it ensures that your score is more accurate so that you can just worry about doing your best.

There are four rubric categories that graders will evaluate you on: Ideas & Analysis, Development & Support, Organization, and Language Use & Conventions. Each grader can give you a score as high as a 6️⃣ on each of the four rubric criteria; then, the average of the scores across the four categories is taken based on how the graders rated your essay. Finally, those two averages from the graders are added to give you your final score which will range from 2 to 12. So, while that formula might be a bit complicated, your overall goal as the writer should be to write a stellar essay such that you can score as well as you possibly can in the four rubric categories mentioned above.

For the ACT Writing section, there sure is quite a bit of math to figure out your score!

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The minimum score you can receive on the essay is a 2, and the maximum score is a 12. Here’s the rubric released by the ACT in full if you want to see what the graders will see! Let’s broadly talk through each of the four grading criteria and see how you can reach your maximum scoring potential.

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💡 Ideas & Analysis

The most important things that the ACT rubric outlines for this rubric category include:

• Engaging with multiple perspectives from the prompt
• Writing a nuanced and precise thesis
• Establishing context for the issue and different perspectives
• • Examining implications, complexities, and tensions in addition to values & assumptions This section of the rubric materializes throughout the essay. For instance, each body paragraph should engage with multiple perspectives, whereas writing a strong thesis is only pertinent to the introduction.

To score well in the Ideas & Analysis rubric category, you need to make sure that you have clearly picked a perspective for your thesis and include arguments against other perspectives to strengthen your points. You can include elements like counterarguments or concessions within each body paragraph to demonstrate your knowledge of implications, complexities, and tensions.

Overall, this section of the rubric is pretty all-encompassing, but with some practice, you can succeed!

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✏️ Development & Support

In this rubric criteria, graders will want you to achieve these things in your essay:

• Substantial evidence and development for your ideas that broaden the context and deepens insight
• An integrated line of reasoning with support that conveys an argument’s significance
• • Qualifications and complications that further boosts the ideas and analysis of your essay Development and support mainly appear in your body paragraphs — the bulk of your ACT writing section. With your evidence, you want to make sure it’s as specific as possible and ties into your logic. You need to have some rationale for your perspective, and the more specific and directly linked to the argument, the better. Additionally, for a strong line of reasoning, you will want to have strong topic sentences to open each of your body paragraphs that serve as subclaims of the thesis and align with the rest of the body paragraph.

The final point in this category is similar to the ‘implications, complexities, and tensions’ point from ideas & analysis — make sure you bring up some counterpoints that can disprove other perspectives and/or boost your chosen idea. The topics chosen by the ACT test writers are deliberately complex; there's not going to be an extremely clear cut or correct answer, so explain that (with limitations, counterpoints, etc.)!

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🗂️ Organization

For the organization category, you’ll want to have these specific aspects of your essay:

• A skillful organizational strategy
• Controlling idea or purpose that unifies your essay
• A logical progression of ideas that makes your argument more effective
• • Transitions both within your paragraphs and between paragraphs to develop relationships between ideas For many, the organization section can be the highest scoring area because many students already write in a pretty organized way! For instance, having paragraphs with each perspective representing a different body paragraph can already score you up to a 4 out of 6! But, since we know you're dedicated Fiveable students, we'll break down how you can score even higher and attain that coveted 6 out of 6.

As a writer, you want to make sure that all your ideas in your essay link back to your thesis and that your organizational structure doesn’t jump back and forth. The ideas should build upon and lead into each other. To help make your essay more cohesive, you want to make sure you’re spicing it up ✨ with some transitions here and there as well — both at the start of your paragraphs and inside your body paragraphs!

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✍️ Language Use & Conventions

With language use & conventions, your essay should have the following:

• Strong use of language
• Skillful and precise word choice
• Varied and clear sentence structures
• Strategic choices in tone and voice
• • Few errors in grammar, mechanics, and usage that don’t impede understanding of your essay Finally, the language use & conventions rubric criteria checks to see if your writing effectively articulates your point. Make sure that your sentences don’t all sound the same — try different sentence structures using things like semicolons, dependent clauses, and colons if you can! 

It’s also important to sound authoritative in your essay, so write formally but not over the top. (You don't need to try out any new vocabulary words, but you probably also shouldn't be writing like you text!). Finally, read through your essay as you go (and once you're done if you have time) to make sure your grader won’t get distracted by any grammar mistakes. Just how speaking clearly and with sufficient volume makes you appear more confident and persuasive, writing clearly and avoiding grammar errors will make your essay come across more persuasive and you come across as a more confident writer. These factors should in turn contribute to an awesome score on the exam!

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🎁 Wrap-Up

At the end of the day, you've got this! The ACT Writing rubric is not so bad once you break it down. Remember, if you need any other help with the ACT, the SAT, AP exams, or college admissions, check out our other guides for all your different learning needs. Happy learning!