ACT June 9 - My feeling.

maikai
Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:06:40 +0000

My niece took some advice I found in CollegeConfidential about prepping for the ACT.

She was very concerned about her score. She has great grades, near 4.0, but she is not in any AP classes, so she is afraid the curriculum won’t be considered challenging. She was hoping she could “show her stuff” with either the SAT or ACT, but got very poor scores in her first practice tests… 18 on her first ACT practice test and the SAT was a true disaster.

I read that some students increased their ACT score remarkably by taking every practice test they could get their hands on. She used the “Real ACT” book set (same as what my son used for his prep), but also got the “Princeton Review ACT” and “Barron’s ACT” (all two book sets with DVDs, I believe).

She started out getting very low 20’s, but increased as she went through the books. She nailed a 28 on the ACT in April. She’s very happy and did not attend the June sitting, even though she had a reservation. 28 is several points higher than she needed for her top pick schools, so the risk of getting a lower score was too great.

My son took his first ACT on June 9th. He thinks he did well, but if he doesn’t like his score, I’m going to push him to do what his cousin did for the Fall test. Why on Earth not?

Reminds me of an old joke:
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice!