On the Enhanced ACT, Science is an opt-in section with its own 1–36 score. The Composite is English, Math, and Reading — full stop. The real question isn’t whether you can skip it; it’s whether your college list lets you.
The 1–36 Composite is the rounded average of English, Math, and Reading. Take Science, and it’s scored 1–36 on its own and paired with Math into a separate STEM score. Nothing about the Science result touches the Composite — a rough Science day can’t drag the headline number, and a great one can’t rescue it.
Practically: the section adds 40 minutes and 40 questions after the 125-minute core. That’s the whole trade — forty more minutes of focus in exchange for two more numbers on the report.
With the Enhanced ACT, which was first administered in April 2025. The rollout ran through the following year — national dates, then school day tests — and as of July 2026 every ACT administration uses the enhanced format. There is no longer a version of the test where the Enhanced ACT Science section is compulsory, and no test date you can pick to avoid the change.
That matters for older prep material as much as for scheduling. A book that treats Science as the fourth scored section is describing a test that is no longer given, and a practice composite calculated as the average of four sections will read high against the three that now count.
Some colleges require or recommend Science, and STEM programs are the likeliest to — a future engineering applicant skipping the one section named after their field is a conversation worth having before test day, not after. Check each school on the list; policies differ and they’re still settling into the new format.
If nothing on the list asks for it, skipping is the honest default: shorter test, all prep time concentrated on the three sections that decide the Composite. RibbitEDU asks the same question when your study plan is set up, mirroring real registration, and builds the plan either way — this is one chapter of the full guide to what changed.
No. The 1–36 Composite is the rounded average of English, Math, and Reading. If you take Science, it gets its own 1–36 score, reported separately, and it feeds a STEM score — the average of Math and Science — never the Composite.
Forty minutes, added after the three core sections, with 40 questions on the form. Skipping it means a 125-minute test instead of 165.
Yes. On the Enhanced ACT, Science is opt-in: you choose it at registration, it carries its own 1–36 score, and skipping it leaves the Composite untouched because the Composite is English, Math, and Reading only.
With the Enhanced ACT, first administered in April 2025. The rollout finished over the following year, and as of July 2026 every ACT administration uses the enhanced format, so there is no test date on which Science is still compulsory.
It depends on your college list, not on the test. If a program you are applying to asks for Science — STEM programs most often do — take it. If none do, the 40 minutes are better spent on the three sections that build your Composite.
Your score report simply won't include a Science or STEM score. For most applicants that reads as ordinary, because the section is optional by design — but a program that asks for Science will notice its absence, which is exactly why the college list decides this, not the test.
The free diagnostic includes 12 core questions and four optional Science questions — Science included — so you can see where you stand before deciding what to sit.