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<p>Why did you take it twice then? You’d only need to have taken it once to figure that out, and you could have taken a practice test instead.</p>
<p>The ACT isn’t like most tests that you take in school. </p>
<p>The English test is pretty straightforward. With the exception of a few rhetoric questions, ACT doesn’t try to trick you at all. You’re simply required to know the basic conventions of the English language and also how to improve sentences/paragraphs. Look at your subscores: if you scores poorly on the usage/mechanics section, then you can improve easily with a prep book; if you struggled on the rhetorics sections, then practice tests will help you learn the format of the test and what ACT is “looking for” when they create the answer choices.</p>
<p>The math section is the most like a comprehensive test that you will take in school. It has material from geometry, algebra I and II, and trigonometry courses that you are expected to have taken prior to the test. The test is also formatted in a manner that arranges the questions, for the most part, in order of difficult. The easiest at the beginning and the hardest at the end. Test prep books are quite comprehensive in this section, but it takes quite a while to cover everything. Look at your lowest subsections and start there.</p>
<p>Judging by the discrepancy in your reading subscores, you’re likely spending too much time on individual passages. You shouldn’t have a ten point difference between two subsections. I recommend doing practice tests and trying to get the test done within the time parameters. Remember this: your goal shouldn’t be to get a perfect score, it should rather be to get the highest score that you can get. If you’re not already within the range of 30+, then abandon your hopes of a 36 and start working economically. If a question appears that it will take you more than 1 minute to solve (on the reading section), skip it. Get that question wrong. If you spend several minutes searching the passage to find the answer, you may get that question right, but you just lost valuable time to finish the section.</p>
<p>On a science test, you’ll learn chapters one and two and then have a test on them. Then you’ll learn chapters three and four and then have a test on those. ACT can’t know what science courses everyone has taken though, so they made their test a science reasoning test; it is basically graph interpretation. You’re expected to have taken a chemistry, biology, and physical science course before taking the test, but it is not necessary (though it will certainly help!). There are normally 1-3 questions that will require mediocre esoteric knowledge, the rest will be entirely deducible from the graphs/passage. Some people recommend that you don’t read the passages at all; personally, I always read them. It’s up to you to determine the best strategy to encompass the test. Just remember, always work economically. There’s no point in spending ages on a single problem.</p>
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<p>I always bring a watch and time myself throughout every section of the test. You don’t need to do this, but keep this data in mind. On the English section, you have 45 minutes to do 75 problems. The questions are separated into 5 passages of 15 questions each. This means that in order to complete the test, you have an average of 9 minutes to do a single passage. If you find yourself at question 13 when you’re 9 minutes into it, then you need to work faster. </p>
<p>The math section is simply to time yourself on. You have 60 questions to do in 60 minutes; this means that you have one minute per question. The questions are arranged in order of difficulty, so try to do the first 35 or so questions in 30-40 seconds each and give yourself extra time to do the final third of the test. </p>
<p>The reading section will kill you for time. It is 40 questions to do in 35 minutes. You have less than a minute to do each question. The test is categorized into four sections, always in the same order: prose fiction, social science, humanities, science. Each section has 10 questions. I try to give me self 35/4 (8:45) minutes to do each section of the test. Depending on how fast of a reader you are, make sure that each passage is somewhere around this time frame. I give myself 4 minutes to read and mark the passage, and then the remainder of the time to answer questions. This is entirely adjustable according to your reading speed.</p>
<p>The science test is categorized into seven sections. You have 40 questions to do in 35 minutes. This test is likely to have a great time limitation as well. There’s not much to say for a universal template for the science section, except to work efficiently and leave the conflicting viewpoints passage for last. Also, don’t get caught up in the unnecessary jargon of the test, for this reason many people recommend to not even read the passages but rather to go straight to the questions. If this works for you, then by all means do it. Also, note that each passage will have a different number of questions associated with it. This makes it hard to time yourself on. Also note that you’re free to skip around, just make sure that you mark appropriately on the answer sheet! I do the passages that look like they pertain to physics first, then chemistry, then biology. (A quick glance of course! I shouldn’t take you more than 15-30 seconds to flip pages/skip passages and save them for later.)</p>
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<p>Remember that there is not penalty for guessing. Ultimately, there is but one way to improve in a non-superficial manner: you have to put time and effort into studying. If your general curriculum does not prepare you properly for the test (I would say that only my math curriculum did this for me), then go and buy a practice book and then do it. Also, do practice tests. After completing them, figure out the answers to questions that you were unsure of or got wrong so that you’ll be able to finish them with ease on the actual test. You’re lucky enough to have the entire summer to prepare.</p>
I average around a 21-23 on practice test but score 28+ on the real thing (probably 30+ on the December ACT). Idk y practice test are so much more difficult for me…