aggregate function with join by most recent date Oracle - oracle

Question

I'm trying to select a single test score for students by test type, test element, semester and ID. One score per ID. If a student has taken the test more than once, I want to only return the highest (or most recent) score for that test and element.
My problem is that there are a very small number of instances (less than 10 records out of 2000) where a student has two test scores recorded on different dates because they've re-taken the test to improve their score and we record both scores. My output therefore has a small number of records with multiple scores for unique name_ids (where test_id = 'act' and element_id = 'comp').
Examples of the two tables are:
students
----------------------------------------------------------
name_id term_id
100 Fall
100 Spring
100 Summer
105 Fall
105 Spring
110 Fall
110 Spring
110 Summer
test_score
----------------------------------------------------------
name_id test_id element_id score test_date
100 act comp 25 02/01/2019
100 sat comp 1250 01/20/2019
105 act comp 19 01/15/2019
105 act comp 21 02/28/2019
110 act comp 27 01/31/2019
I've tried using MAX(test_score) but perhaps could use MAX(test_date)? Either would work because the students don't report additional test scores from later dates if the scores aren't higher than what was originally reported.
This is a small part of a larger routine joining several tables so I don't know that I can replace my JOIN(s). I'm just trying to get this small subset of the routine to produce the correct number of unique records
SELECT
a.name_id NameID,
a.term_id TermID,
MAX(b.score) Score
FROM students a
LEFT JOIN test_score b ON a.name_id = b.name_id AND b.test_id = 'act' AND b.element_id = 'comp'
WHERE a.term_id = 'Spring'
group by b.score,a.name_id,a.term_id
order by a.name_id
No error messages but results from above will yield two records for NameID 105:
NameID TermID Score
100 Spring 25
105 Spring 19
105 Spring 21
110 Spring 27
I'm not certain how to write this to only select the highest score (or only the score from the most recent date)
Thanks for your guidance.

Answer 1

To select the highest score the GROUP BY cannot include the score...
SELECT
a.name_id NameID,
a.term_id TermID,
MAX(b.score) Score
FROM students a
LEFT JOIN test_score b ON a.name_id = b.name_id AND b.test_id = 'act' AND b.element_id = 'comp'
WHERE a.term_id = 'Spring'
group by a.name_id,a.term_id
order by a.name_id
To get the score associated with the highest date...
SELECT x.NameID,
x.TermID,
y.score
FROM (
SELECT
a.name_id NameID,
a.term_id TermID,
--- MAX(b.score) Score
MAX(b.test_date) test_date
FROM students a
LEFT JOIN test_score b ON a.name_id = b.name_id AND b.test_id = 'act' AND b.element_id = 'comp'
WHERE a.term_id = 'Spring'
group by a.name_id,a.term_id ) x
LEFT JOIN test_score y ON x.nameid = y.name_id AND x.test_date = y.test_date
order by x.nameid