Universities and Colleges by ACT Score Percentiles

When you're considering to which public college or university to apply, sometimes it is very helpful to browse through schools that have students scoring similarly on the ACT as you did. If your ACT scores are completely lower or higher than 75% of the students who were accepted to a particular school, then perhaps you would be better off searching for a school where students are more in your range, although exceptions are certainly made all the time.

If you have scored in a similar range, and all your other credentials fit – GPA, extracurricular activities, recommendation letters, etc. – then perhaps one of these schools would be a good fit. Please keep in mind that this list is for the composite ACT scores - out of 36.

Which ACT Score Percentiles Are Included?

This is a list of both public and private colleges and universities arranged by ACT score percentiles, specifically, the 25th percentile. What does that mean? 75% of the accepted students scored above or at the composite ACT scores listed below.

You'll notice that I skipped a few of the statistics below. First, the scores where 75% of students earned between a 15 – 20 composite score are missing because the number of schools that would have to be included was just too vast. With most students scoring somewhere in the 20 – 21 range, the list of colleges was over 400. Chances are good, if your school is not listed, then it's probably accepting a majority of students who are scoring in the average ACT range. I also did not include the private schools where a majority of the students are earning between a 20 – 25 on the ACT because that number was exceptionally large, as well.