How to Get a 36 on the ACT

Scoring a 36 on the ACT is the ultimate goal for many students applying to US universities. A perfect composite score places you among the very highest-performing test-takers in the world and can massively strengthen your application to selective colleges.

However, achieving this score is far from easy. Only a tiny fraction of students manage it each year – and just being clever or doing lots of practice tests won’t get you there. Students who score 36 typically combine strong academic foundations, strategic preparation, and disciplined test-taking techniques.

In this guide, we break down how to score a 36 on the ACT – from the prep to do, to tips for each section, and the techniques to apply on test day itself. If you are aiming for a perfect score, this guide will show you what it takes and how to approach the challenge step by step.

How Many People Get a 36 on the ACT?

Just how rare is it to get a 36? The latest data shows that very, very few students get a perfect composite score.

Number and % of Students Who Get a 36, by Section

	English	Math	Reading	Science	Composite
Number	10766	5227	22441	8431	2958
%	0.78%	0.38%	1.63%	Unknown	0.21%

In 2025, 2,958 of the 1.38m students who took the ACT got a 36 composite score. This equates to 0.21% of test-takers. In 2024, the figure was 0.22%, so we can see that consistently only a fraction of a percent of students get a 36 on the ACT.

More students get a 36 on at least one of the sections, with Reading the most common (1.63% of students getting a 36) and Math the least (only 0.38% of students getting a 36).

What Do You Need to Do to Get a 36?

Now we know how rare it is, you might wonder how you can actually get a 36 on the ACT – how many questions do you need to get right, and how many can you afford to miss?

The good news is that you don’t need to get every single question correct to get a composite 36. There are three reasons for this:

1. Because of the scaling process. Your raw number of correct answers in each section is scaled to a score between 1 and 36, to account for the fact that some test sittings are slightly harder than others. Depending on which test you happen to take, one or two wrong answers might not pull you below 36.
2. Because your composite score is the average of three section scores. Your composite score is the average of your Math, Reading, and English scale scores. These are rounded to the nearest whole number, so you could still get a 36 with two scores of 36 and one of 35. ACT section scores are rounded to give your composite
3. Because not all questions are scored. On each section, the ACT includes a few ‘field test’ questions – these are questions which they are trialling for use in future tests. Your answers to these do not count towards your score, so you could get them all wrong and still end up with a 36. The hitch: you have no way of telling which are real (or ‘operational’) questions and which are field tests.

If you’re interested, you can learn more about how the ACT is scored in our dedicated guide.

One caveat – in recent years, in English and Reading, if you dropped just one question, you would score a 35. In Math, you could often afford to get one wrong and still get a 36.

How to Prepare to 36 Standard

The headline is that getting a 36 on the ACT is really hard and accordingly requires really hard work. 36s aren’t scored by geniuses who rock up on test day and just know all the answers. They’re scored by students who understand the test, prep both hard and smart, and never give up.

There are, of course, unique strategies for preparation and exam technique for each section of the test – we’ll get to those later. For now, we’ll focus on advice that applies to the test as a whole.

Start Early

You can’t cram your way to a 36. There are quick tweaks you can make to your exam technique that will boost your score by a couple of points, and those are really valuable. But if you want to be one of the top 0.21% students who get a 36, you need to start your preparation months out – or even further.

Students who take difficult AP classes across the core sections of the ACT tend to score higher. Why? Because they’re regularly exposed to high-level Math and difficult reading passages, when these show up on the test, they can understand and answer these questions quicker and more accurately than other students.

For non-US students, the equivalent would be taking A Level or IB Higher Level Maths and English. These could be decisions you make more than a year before you take the ACT, but they have a major pay-off.

Thinking more narrowly about the test, beginning your prep 6 months or more before you intend to sit it for the first time allows you to do loads of practices, understand your weak points, address them, revise, and then do even more practice.

Make Your Prep Hard

Elite athletes make their training harder than the real thing. They might wear leg weights or play on a reduced-sized pitch. The idea is that when it comes to game day, the match itself seems so much easier than what they’re used to.

What could be equivalents for the ACT?

Focus on the questions you find hardest. If you struggle with higher level Math, or even specifically higher level algebra, do an entire Math section of these questions. Of course, you don’t only want to do this – make sure you have practised the ‘easier’ questions, too, so you don’t get rusty at these.

Practise with less time than you’re really allowed. Reduce the time for each section by 10% and get used to scoring perfectly like that. Then, when you suddenly have an extra 10%, it will feel like more than enough time – because it will be.

Double Check Your Answers

Many students (understandably) think they don’t have enough time to answer every question once, let alone go back and check it. But we’re not talking about many students – we’re talking about you, and you want to achieve a 36. This is what it takes.

Why is this in our ‘general prep tips’ section, rather than our advice for test day? The reason is that you need to get fast enough to leave five minutes in each section to double check your answers, and that takes lots of practice in advance.

What double checking involves varies from one section to the next:

• For English, check that the chosen answer actually corrects the original grammatical issue. If you selected ‘no change’, confirm that the sentence truly works as written and that you haven’t overlooked a mistake.
• For Math, try re-solving the question quickly using a different approach where possible. In some cases you can plug your answer back into the problem; in others, review the steps you used to make sure there are no calculation or logic errors.
• For Reading, ensure your answer is the strongest option by reviewing the alternatives and ruling out the three incorrect choices – you should be able to give a reason for why each answer you haven’t chosen is wrong.
• For Science, check any calculations and make sure you’re referring to the correct data or graphs. When working quickly, it’s easy to mix up figures or tables, so take a moment to confirm you’re using the right one.

Practise Strategically

Early on in your prep, do two full practice tests: one timed and one untimed. Compare your scores for each section in each test.

If there’s not much difference, your key blocker is knowledge or exam technique. Make use of our next piece of advice to address this.

If you score much better in the untimed practice, then your blocker to a 36 is timing. This can be improved by lots more practice under timed conditions and finding the best strategy for approaching each section. For instance, many students waste time by reading all the Science passages in full, when skipping straight to the questions will (usually) speed you up.

Making use of practice tests as diagnostic tools and not just familiarisation materials is a key difference between good scorers and 36 scorers.

Learn from Your Mistakes

This is maybe the most important piece of advice to score a 36 on the ACT. Top scorers don’t just note which questions they got wrong, they understand why they got them wrong and do something about it.

We recommend keeping a logbook of questions you struggled with divided into the four sections of the test (or three if you’re skipping Science). After every practice test or section, make a note of every question that you a) got wrong or b) were even a little unsure about.

Then, write down why you struggled with it – give a specific reason. Go to your prep book or ACT tutor and re-learn the content. Then find more examples of this question type and drill them until they are second nature.

Stay Motivated

Resilience and dedication is a massively underrated factor in top scorers. It’s easy to get bored and skip a day of prep, and then another, and another…or to take a practice test, see your Math score drop from 36 to 32 without warning, and think you’re going backwards.

These dark nights of the soul are the difference between those who score 36 on the ACT and the rest. The only way to get to a 36 is not to give up, to get back on the horse, and stick to good preparation principles. It will pay off by test day.

How to Score a 36 on Each ACT Section

English

The good news about ACT English is that it’s the section where revision can most directly lead to score increases. Here’s the key: just learn all the grammar rules. Memorise them in whatever way works for you – flashcards, the Leitner System, the Feynman Technique. Just memorise them and apply them – many, many easy points await you.

You can read more ACT English tips, including the most commonly tested grammar rules, in our dedicated guide.

Reading

There are two key things to understand about the Reading if you want to get a 36:

1. The key is timing. More so than any other section, students struggle with timing in the Reading. To increase your speed, read widely, practise lots, and find the approach to the section that best suits you – we outline a few options in our guide to ACT Reading tips. Whatever happens, you have 10 minutes per passage, so once your time is up, guess and move on.
2. The answer is always in the passage. If you find yourself bringing in your own knowledge to answer the question, think again.

Math

Prepare for the ACT Math like four different finals: algebra, algebra II, pre-calculus, and statistics. Thinking of it like this will help you organise your revision and ensure that you practise all of the required topics.

If you do nothing else, make sure you revise two things:

• Matrices. These come up on every test and lots of students lose marks here.
• Formulas. The ACT doesn’t provide a formula sheet, so memorise the key formulas and equations.

Two key exam technique tips for the Math:

• Get a good, test-approved calculator and master its functions: efficient calculator use can save you loads of time.
• Do the easiest (first 15) questions fast. The middle 15 are harder, and the last 15 the hardest, so you’ll want to leave more time for these.

Science

If you want to score a 36 on ACT Science, you need to understand this section. It’s far more a test of information retrieval more than scientific knowledge.

For this reason, a useful strategy for most passages is to avoid reading the full passage first. Instead, go directly to the questions and then refer back to the figures or text when necessary. This will save you loads of time.

The exception is the Conflicting Viewpoints passage. In these cases, the passage describes different scientific hypotheses or perspectives, and reading the passage carefully before answering the questions can help you understand the differences between the viewpoints.

These are just two of the ACT Science tips we cover in our dedicated guide to that section.

Test-Day Tips to Score a 36 on the ACT

If you are aiming for a perfect score, preparation alone is not enough. Understanding how to score a 36 on the ACT also means approaching test day with the right strategies so that you can perform at your best from the very first question.

Warm Up Your Brain Before the Test

One of the most overlooked strategies when thinking about how to score a 36 on the ACT is warming up your brain before the exam begins. Many students arrive at the test centre and start the exam while still feeling tired or mentally slow.

In the morning before the test, complete a short warm-up activity that gets your mind working, like answering a single Reading passage. By the time the test begins, you want to be firing on all cylinders, rather than spending the first section trying to shake off tiredness or mental fog.

Keep Your Mind Clear

At one time or another during the test, you will almost certainly feel you could have done better. Maybe you forgot a grammar rule you revised, or fell into the trap of spending too long on a tricky question.

The key to scoring 36 on the ACT is to keep your mind clear of these doubts. Don’t spiral, think your perfect score is down the drain, and that your life chances are ruined.

If you had to guess a question or two, you don’t know that your guesses were wrong. And even if you did get it wrong, there’s a decent chance that question was a ‘field test’ question and won’t even count. You don’t know, so stop thinking about it. Clear your head and move on. If you’re holding on to doubts or wallowing in misery, you won’t perform at your best in the sections to come.

Don’t Get Stuck on Difficult Questions

Efficient pacing is essential. If you encounter a question that seems unusually difficult or time-consuming, eliminate any definitely wrong answers, make your best guess, and move on. A good rule of thumb is 30 seconds – if the answer’s not obvious by then, it’s time to guess.

Remember that every question is worth the same number of points. Staying flexible and keeping the test moving forward will help you maximise your score across the entire exam.

ACT Preparation from Dukes Plus

If you’re struggling to make progress on your own, consider seeking extra help.

At Dukes Plus, our expert ACT preparation has helped students improve their scores for more than 20 years. Our ACT prep course offers an intensive guide to the content and key test strategies to excel, while our ACT test tutoring helps students increase their score by 7 points on average.

Book a free consultation to learn more.