<p>I heard from a lot of people that the best way to study is get the ACT Red book, which I'm ordering today. But I was wondering if I should get the Barron's 36 book because I'm not aiming for a 36 but somewhere in the high 30s.</p>
<p>I took a practice ACT and got a 24. I got Barron’s 36 and recently finished reading it. The book gives great tips and tricks, however only 1 practice test. I have yet to take another practice test after reading Barron’s but I feel confident then before. Anybody can read and learn, the only way to improve is to practice, only read it if you have time if not just pile through practice tests.</p>
<p>I’ve never understood how people aim for anything besides a 36. I mean when you take the test you’ll do your best to answer every question correctly, meaning you are aiming for a 36, right? Am I missing something here? When you take the test will you say “hmm, I think I answered most of the question correctly, I’ll answer a few wrong on purpose since I’m aiming for high 30’s and not a 36”? If there is some logic here that I am missing, please explain it to me.</p>
<p>/rant</p>
<p>I actually have nothing to contribute to this thread, I haven’t used the barron’s 36 book. I used the barron’s 6 practice tests book and that got me a 36. Good luck with the ACT, take a lot of practice tests, aim for a 36.</p>
<p>It also depends on what your diagnostic score is. Take a diagnostic test from PR cracking the act or the real act which are more accurate. Barron’s is actually a lot harder than the actual test. If your already scoring in the 30-33 range Barron’s will bring that up to a 34-36 range. When you score well on the Barron’s test you’ll actually score a lot higher on the actual test. I think you should spend most of your time on the real act and/or PR cracking the act once you consistently score in your desired range (high 30’s) then use Barron’s to solidify the info. Don’t worry if it’s a lot lower at first work your way up to the high 30’s and you should be good. :)</p>
<p>I would definitely recommend getting both the red book and Barron’s 36 book. I signed up for the ACT, not planning on prepping much, but then forgot my ID for the SAT and didn’t take it. Basically, I had a week to prep for the ACT. I got the Barron’s 36 Book because I wanted to score as high as possible (hoping for a 36, but realistically a 34 or 35, so my goal was similar to yours).</p>
<p>The Barron’s 36 Book includes a lot of tricks that will help you score higher no matter what score you are aiming for, such as strategies for completing each section and which passages to tackle first. I found the science section in the 36 book particularly helpful- It increased my score from a 32 to a 35 (tests taken from the Red Book) and I got a 34 on the actual test. The 36 gives you tricks that the Red Book won’t, because the Red Book is made by the ACT and they probably don’t want to give all the tricks away to everyone! So overall, get the Red Book for the practice tests and the Barron’s 36 book for the strategies. It helped me immensely (I scored a 34).</p>
<p><em>posts this August 2013</em>
<em>it’s february 2014</em>
<em>still no ACT prep</em></p>
<p>@blairwaldorf6321 lol ya i’ll study eventually…</p>