How Many Times Should You Take the ACT?
· 7 min read
The short answer is two or three. The useful answer is about what each sitting is for.
ACT's current guidance: there is no limit on how many times you can take the test, and on average students need two to three sittings to reach their goal. You may test once per national test date.
See whether a retake is worth it here
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There is no official cap — despite what you'll read
You will find "you can take the ACT a maximum of 12 times" repeated across the internet. That figure comes from older ACT administration manuals, not from ACT's current student guidance.
ACT's own student-facing page today says it plainly: "There is no limit to how many times students can take the ACT test. On average it takes students 2-3 times to achieve their testing goals."
So the real constraints are not a rulebook. They are three practical ones:
- One sitting per national test date. There are seven national dates in a testing year.
- Score release timing, which governs whether a sitting arrives before your deadlines.
- Diminishing returns, which is the one that actually decides the answer.
Source: ACT, "Can You Retake the ACT? How Many Times & Should You".
Why two or three is the honest answer
Score gains are front-loaded. The first retake tends to produce the largest jump, for two reasons that have nothing to do with getting smarter:
- The first sitting is partly a format tax. Pacing, stamina, how the screen behaves, how it feels to not finish a section. That cost is paid once.
- You finally know what is wrong. Before a real sitting, preparation is guesswork. After one, it is targeted.
By the third or fourth attempt, the sections you are strong in have usually topped out, and the conversion curve near the ceiling is brutal — in English, the last few raw points are worth about two scale points each, so a careless error costs more than it used to.
See how little percentile movement there is near the top →Superscoring changes what a retake is for
This is the part worth planning around. A superscore takes your best English, Math and Reading from across every test date and averages those. On the Enhanced ACT, Science is excluded, so it never affects it.
At a school that superscores, a retake can only help your number. A lower section score simply is not used. That changes a retake from a gamble into a one-way option.
And it changes the strategy. If you are judged on one sitting, every date has to be strong everywhere. If you are superscored, each date can have a job: target Math in one, Reading in the next.
One limit to know: ACT states that students cannot currently retake individual sections. You sit the whole test again. Superscoring is what gets you most of the way to the same outcome.
Work out your superscore and what it's worth over your best single sitting →But check the policy, because it can be worth five figures
Not every school superscores, and some say so explicitly — including for scholarships specifically.
The University of Alabama's scholarship page states: "UA does not use superscores for scholarship purposes." Official composite from a single sitting only.
On their published 2027 out-of-state grid, a 29 earns $15,000 a year and a 30 earns $24,000. So a student with a 30 superscore but a best single sitting of 29 receives the lower award — a $36,000 difference over four years, created entirely by a policy detail, not by a score.
Policies fall into three groups, and you have to check each school:
| Policy | What a retake does |
|---|---|
| Superscores | Can only help. Target one section per sitting. |
| Highest single sitting | Helps only if the whole sitting beats your best. |
| Considers all scores | Sees everything; no combining. |
Timing: count backwards from your deadlines
The mistake that costs the most is not taking the test too few times. It is taking the last one too late.
ACT scores for the multiple-choice sections take roughly two to four weeks to post, and official reports sent to colleges can take longer. Merit scholarship deadlines are often earlier than admission deadlines — Alabama's 2027 deadline for applications and official score reports is December 4 for summer/fall entry.
So a December test date does not make a December deadline. Work backwards:
- Find the earliest deadline that matters, including scholarship deadlines.
- Subtract four weeks for scores to arrive, and a little more for official reports.
- That is your last usable test date. Any sitting after it is for a different purpose.
A sensible plan
For a typical student on a normal timeline:
Sitting 1 — spring of junior year. Early enough to leave room, late enough to have covered the Math content. Treat it as information gathering.
Sitting 2 — summer or early autumn of senior year. The highest-value one. You now know your weak section and your pacing problems, and you have had a holiday to work on them.
Sitting 3 — autumn of senior year, if needed. Targeted at one section, and only if it lands before your earliest deadline.
Stop when your score plateaus across two sittings despite real targeted work, when you have cleared the thresholds that matter on your list, or when the calendar has run out.
Work out whether a retake is worth it
Real Enhanced ACT-format questions and a projected score per section, with an explanation on every miss. It tells you which section has the most room — which is the whole basis for planning another sitting.
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Does retaking look bad?
No. Two or three sittings is unremarkable and widely expected; ACT reports that a large share of test takers test more than once.
The only caveat is that some schools require you to send all scores, so a very long string of attempts becomes visible. That is an argument against eight sittings, not against three.
What actually decides whether a retake works
Not the number of attempts. What you do between them.
A retake with no diagnosis in between tends to reproduce the first score, because the same misses happen for the same reasons. The students who gain are the ones who can answer a specific question: which concepts did I get wrong, and was it a knowledge gap, a misread, a pacing failure or carelessness?
Those four causes need four completely different fixes, and only one of them is "study more."
The method for finding out which one you have →Related
Frequently asked questions
How many times can you take the ACT?
ACT's current guidance states there is no limit to how many times a student can take the test, and that on average it takes students two to three sittings to reach their goal. You can take it once per national test date. A twelve-attempt cap is widely quoted online but comes from older ACT administration manuals, not ACT's current student guidance.
How many times should you take the ACT?
Two or three times is where most of the benefit lands. The first retake typically produces the largest gain, and by the fourth sitting the sections you are already strong in have usually topped out. What matters more than the count is whether each sitting has a specific target section.
Does taking the ACT multiple times look bad to colleges?
No. Taking it two or three times is completely normal and most colleges expect it. Some schools require you to send every score, so a very long string of attempts can become visible, but a handful of sittings carries no stigma and many schools only look at your best.
Can you retake just one section of the ACT?
No. ACT states that students currently cannot retake individual sections — you sit the full test again. You can, however, earn a superscore, which combines your best section scores across dates and achieves much of the same effect.
Is it worth retaking the ACT if you did well?
At a school that superscores, a retake carries essentially no downside to the number, because a lower section score simply is not used. The question becomes whether the time is better spent elsewhere in your application. If a merit aid band sits one point above your current score, the answer is usually yes.
When should you stop retaking the ACT?
When your score has plateaued across two consecutive sittings despite targeted preparation, when you have cleared the thresholds that matter at the schools on your list, or when the next test date falls after your deadlines. Any one of those is a reasonable place to stop.