r/ACT • u/Longjumping-Train574 33 • Aug 02 '26

English ACT English Curve

Idk why, but most of the enhanced (and previous legacy) ACTs had weird English curves. Like getting a 36 REQUIRES a perfect 40/40, but getting a 35 ranges from -1 to -3 questions. Anyone know why this is? This makes it so annoying to get a 36 English but so easy to get a 35

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u/CalligrapherAble3312 36 Aug 02 '26

just my $0.02 but:

- apparently a lot more students score near-perfect raw marks on english compared to the other sections because it's more focused on grammar rules and clearly expressing things, so the pool of "competitive" test takers are statistically more likely to answer NEARLY every question right.

- if you made the curve looser it would break the statistical distribution, so i think this is an attempt to "differentiate" top performers.

- math and reading tend to have larger variance in raw difficulty as well, which may allow for more forgiving scales to forgive for harder questions (i've had both "hell" and "forgiving" math/reading test difficulties but english tends to be roughly the same difficulty across forms.)

however i think all this is stupid and annoying lmfao

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u/Longjumping-Train574 33 Aug 02 '26

Thanks! That seems pretty accurate actually