Average Scores on the ACT College Admission Test Rise, But the Average Black Score Declines

A record number of high school seniors in 2007 took the American College Testing Program's ACT college admission test. More than 1.3 million high school seniors nationwide, including more than 152,000 black students, took the ACT exam. The number of black students taking the ACT test has increased by 18 percent in just the past four years.

The ACT test is scored on a scale of 1 to 36. The average composite score for all students in 2007 was 21.2. This was up one tenth of a point from a year ago. For whites, the mean score in 2007 was 22.1, also up one tenth of a point from 2006. For blacks, the mean score of 17.0 was one tenth point lower than in 2006. Blacks were the only ethnic group to see a decline in their average score on the ACT test in 2007.

Copyright © 2007. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.