The Georgia Department of Education released the ACT scores of the 2024 high school graduating class Wednesday showing students outpaced the national average. This is the eighth year in a row where Georgia teens exceeded the national average on the widely used college admissions exam.
The ACT, which assesses students for college readiness, covers four academic areas: English, mathematics, reading and scientific reasoning. The ACT uses a score range of 1 to 36, with the higher number being the top possible score. While students earn an individual score in each subject, their overall or composite score is an average of the four.
Georgia students’ average composite score was 21.2, a slight drop from the 2023 average of 21.3. The 2023 score was 0.3 points lower than for the class of 2022, but was nearly 2 points higher than the national average of 19.5. Teens in the class of 2024 were high school freshmen during the first full year of COVID-19 learning disruptions.
In metro Atlanta, Decatur students had the highest average composite score, 24.6.
This year’s average exceeds the state’s pre-pandemic average of 20.7. Georgia students posted their highest score in reading, 22.2.
Nationwide, an estimated 36% of 2024 high school graduates — roughly 1.4 million — took the ACT. The participation rate among Georgia students was lower than the national average at 27%, according to a DOE spokeswoman.
Credit: Georgia Department of Education
Credit: Georgia Department of Education
Many Georgia students opt to take the SAT, a rival admissions test. According to the state, 52% of Georgia’s class of 2024 took the SAT at some point during their high school careers. The 2024 graduating cohort earned a mean score of 1030 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT, 35 points higher than the national score of 995.
Selective colleges prefer students with a composite ACT of 28 or higher. For example, many students admitted to the University of Georgia this year had an ACT score between 29 and 34, according to the 2024 summary of admitted students. At Georgia Tech, the average ACT score of admitted students was 32.
Among the class of 2024 in Georgia, 63% met the readiness benchmark in English and 51% did so in reading. Math and science performances were not as strong. In math, only 39% of Georgia test takers met the benchmark, while 40% did so in science. Nationally, only 20% of students met the benchmarks in all four academic areas. In Georgia, 29% of students met all four.
“The class of 2024 continues to make us proud here in Georgia — from beating the nation on both the SAT and ACT to achieving an all-time-high graduation rate for our state,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said in a statement Wednesday. “It’s encouraging to see that investing in academic recovery, despite the challenges of the last several years, has paid off for our students and their futures. I offer my congratulations to the class of 2024 and their teachers, parents, and communities who made this possible.”
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