Accept means to receive or agree. Except means to leave something out. The spellings are close, and ACT English will offer both. Treat it as a diction choice, the same family as word choice on ACT English.
Which job the sentence needs
The college will accept a superscore. That is receiving or agreeing. Every section counts except Science, which is optional. That is an exclusion. If you can replace the word with “but not” or “other than,” you need except.
Except can also be a verb meaning to exclude, but the ACT almost always wants the preposition: everything except one case.
Another one-letter pair
Distance words split the same way. Those are in farther versus further. When the choices are idioms rather than lookalikes, see ACT idioms. The grammar map is in ACT grammar rules.
The bottom line
Taking something in is accept. Leaving something out is except.
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