is a 26 a good ACT score?

A 26 beats the national average (around 19-20) comfortably and clears the middle-50% range at a large number of public universities. Plenty of students are admitted to good programs with exactly this score.

What a retest buys you here is mostly money: many universities publish merit scholarship tables that step up at 27 and again at 30. Three more points can be worth thousands of dollars a year, and score gains in this range are very achievable with targeted prep on your weakest two or three topic areas.

Percentiles are approximate, rounded from ACT's published national norms, which shift slightly each year. Since 2025 the ACT composite is the average of English, Math and Reading. Science is an optional section reported separately.