<p>I'm planning to take the ACT sometime in the fall, most likely in September, and its my first time! I live in MD so a lot people don't take the ACT at all and really aren't familiar with it so, its a little hard to get tips from anyone but my counselor who, to be honest, has never actually sat down and taken the ACT.</p>
<p>I have no idea where to start with studying! Any ideas from anyone? I want to get the best score possible!</p>
<p>Anyone have any ideas? How did you guys get ready for it? I have 4 months to do all this stuff if it helps spark some ideas!</p>
<p>I would get The Real ACT book (bug red book), read through it and take as many practice tests as you can! The real ACT book is writing by the same people who create the ACT test, so it can help you get used to the format of the test. Try and simulate the test conditions as best as you can. I would set off a day where you can take a full test. After you take the test, go through and mark your answers & calculate your composite score. Then go through each and every question you got wrong, find out why you missed it & rework them (this is mostly for the math portion, redo the problems you got wrong). Practice tests definitely help! Good luck!</p>
<p>Yep ^^ Start out by getting the red book. Then the next step is to start lurking the forums around here: helped tons, trust me.</p>
<p>Thanks! Does anyone know what to do for science? I know that it’s just interpreting graphs but I still only got a 50% on the grockit.com diagnostic test.</p>
<p>^yes, get the red book and do the real questions instead of relying on online fake tests.</p>
<p>Don’t fret too much-I’m in the same boat, I’m going to take the act in the fall for the first time too, but I just finished an act/psat/sat prep course and just taking some practice tests boosted my score 4 points since the first time I took it. Remember most colleges want you to take the writing portion as well, but the grammar and science sections are the easiest to improve.</p>
<p>@henryvli: I’m definitely going to get the red book now. I wasn’t planning on completely relying on grockit. I just wanted to use the diagnostic tests to see where I was :).</p>
<p>@julieannab: Its good to know that I can bump up my science! I think its because I haven’t taken a class where we used a ton of charts in a while. In my Bio class for next year we already have a lab to do over the summer so I think there’ll be plenty more. Hopefully that’ll help. Thanks!</p>