I am taking the June 2016 ACT. I wanted to know if official ACT online prep is a good resource. From the snapshots it looks decent on math lessons and practice but I want to know ur guys stories.
Do you think this would be sufficient study for first ACT?
-ACT online prep
-Erica meltzers ultimate guide to ACT english
-Crack ACT released tests
I feel the online prep can teach me lessons and content for math (particularly geometry & trigonometry) and Erica meltzers can teach me grammar for english. I can then be prepared to take practice tests in these sections after learning them (as they’re more subject based). As for reading and science, I’ve heard practice test are about it.
So could u guys weight in on my study ideas plus the quality of ACT online prep?
I’ll let some others comment on the different practice tests and books… but I will tell you my son watched some videos on YouTube regarding strategies for taking the science section (and others). He raised his science sub-score substantially. This section is more about time management than anything.
I’m taking the June test too! It’ll be my second time taking it. For reading and English I recommend PR or Barron’s 36. I used both of those to prep the first time and scored a 30 on Reading and a 27 on English. For prep this time around I’m focusing on math and science. All I can recommend for those is the official ACT prep and YouTube videos on strategy.
Good luck 
@markj4994
I like the official ACT’s online prep tool, it has a lot of practice questions, around 2500 and nothing beats practicing for the ACT than the official questions. At least the easy questions are often repeated on ACT tests, so you can get those out of the way. The lessons are okay, text based and a bit dry, but the really useful part is the large database of official ACT questions.
I read on Reddit that the questions for the ACT online prep are repeats from Steven Dulan’s McGraw-Hill ACT book. Can anyone confirm this? If so, this is very concerning if the questions are not written by the ACT folks… Reminds me of the issues discussed regarding Khan academy questions not being written by the College Board. Can anyone enlighten me? Would ACT give a straight answer if I called them?
FWIW, I actually thought the online course was pretty decent (I’ve purchased it but only given it a cursory look)… it actually sounded more like a test prep person wrote it (which I mean in a good way). However, if questions are not actually official, then there’s a problem.
My D used the online prep a LOT these past few months. She raised her math score 3 points and her English score 5 points. She liked the portability of it and the repetition.
@Hsvon01 Hmm, that is interesting that the practice questions in the Online Prep may be taken straight from McGraw Hill’s ACT book. That would not be a good thing, because students need to practice with actual official ACT questions and not something written by a test prep book. I do know all of the math questions in the ACT Online prep, let me see if I can get my hands on the McGraw Hill book and see if there are any overlaps. I don’t think ACT will give a straight answer if you called them, in any case the lower level customer support staff would have no clue about this kind of detail.
The revised SAT questions on Khan Academy are indeed written by Khan Academy, but they have done it under close supervision from Collegeboard and I do believe that they broadly capture the types of problems CB will write for the new SATs. At least those sets will cover the most common types of SAT problems.