I’m a senior planning to the act in December, but I feel that I’m struggling specifically in the science section. This was on e of the few books that I saw specifically geared towards the science section of the ACT. Could someone who has purchased and used this book make any comments on how helpful this book was?
I used the book during summer break in order to get familiar with the test format. I had scored a 32 on a practice test before studying, and then got a 35 after quickly going through the book. My scores keep fluctuating within the 33-36 range now.
I would say definitely get the book if you want to get a feel for the section and learn how to tackle each question type. It is a sweet short book and doesn’t really take more than a few hours to finish. I specially like how it walks you through different question/passage types and shows you the best way to tackle each.
Good luck!
My daughter struggles with the Science section - just bought this on Amazon - thanks for the suggestion!
No problem, I hope it helps!
A few suggestions/tips:
- Please tell her not to panic. This is really really important and makes A LOT of difference when it comes to the science section. She should remind herself that the answers are right on the page in front of her and that she can find them with little effort.
- Details. She NEEDS to pay attention to the details of each question, because careless errors are usually are what makes the science section bothersome.
- Questions first. I suggest going straight to the questions and answering all the questions that can be answered using the given data/graphs first, and then skimming the passage searching for keywords of the questions that cannot be answered using the graphs. The only exception is the conflicting viewpoints passage, but I still suggest reading only the intro, first (and possibly last) sentence of each viewpoint, and then going back to the passage while answering the questions. Reading the topic sentence of each viewpoint paragraph will help her know where to hunt for the answers when she is reading the questions while preventing her from wasting time, because she would still have to go back to the passage at times even if she read the whole thing.
- Finally, the timing. She needs to aim for 4 minutes for 5-question passages, 5 minutes for 6-question passages and 6 minutes for 7-question passages in order to finish just in time (She needs to bubble in the answers SUPER fast). If she succeeds to cut 20-30 seconds off each passage's timing, she can bubble in the answers with comfortable pace.
Best of luck!
Thanks @“Elina M” will pass on your advice.
@my2caligirls anytime!