25 is not a bad score at all, it puts your daughter above the average for sure. As you get higher in the 20s and into the low 30s, the number of people receiving those scores declines dramatically. Out of my class of about 600 kids, I think we had maybe six to eight who scored over 32. The majority of them scored in the low 20s. The good thing about the ACT is that taking it again
does not count against her. There is absolutely no downside at all to taking it again.
As for which test to take, when i was applying to school five years ago, I found that most schools had a preference mostly related to their region. The East Coast schools by and large preferred the SAT and the West Coast schools would take the ACT, and most midwest schools didn't really care (at least that's how I found it.)
I think most schools have taken many more things into account since I applied for school...these raw numbers don't tell them much about the person in the long run. In my school, the kids who got the high scores were the kids you knew were going to get them (ie me
). GPA matters too. If you've got a 2.2 GPA and drop a 33 on your ACT, then that doesn't match up. If your daughter has a 25 ACT and a 3.2 GPA, then she should be okay. I think her personal essays may very well be more important depending on what kind of school she's going to, what she says and how she writes it.
Figure out what parts of the ACT she did the most poorly on, and study for those sections for next time..I bet you see a couple points better. Having a 28 or so behind her separates her from the pack dramatically when it comes to trying to earn scholarships.
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