<p>I kind of really hate myself right now...like a lot.
I am from Canada and decided to apply to american schools in september (pretty last minute) after much contemplating. I barely studied, didn't know much about the ACT, and scored like 29 (composite) on all the practice tests. My gpa is a mediocre 3.6. I kept thinking to myself "why on earth am i doing this? I'm not going to get in!", but to my surprise I did pretty well on english, math and writing. The only thing is, I scored EXCEPTIONALLY LOW on reading and science balancing out my surprsingly higher english, math, writing scores</p>
<p>I am so disappointed because had I done well on reading and science, there would actually be a glimmer of hope for me (which would be mind-blowingly surprising and gratifying)</p>
<p>Pleeeaaase if you have any good strategies for reading and science, would you be so kind as to sharing them with me? I am retaking the ACT in december. :)</p>
<p>The october science and reading sections were pretty hard this time compared to how it usually is. For the science section, make sure you read the questions about the passage 1st, and then refer back to the main graph to get the answers. I find that to be the quickest way. For the reading section, I find that to be pretty easy, so i’m not sure. But I use the same tatic as for the science section, and it usually works.</p>
<p>For science, the best thing to do is do all the passages with graphs, charts, etc. first. Do the passage that is just reading like a comparison of hypothesis last. ONLY read the first paragraph of EACH section so you know what exactly is going on/being tested. The hypothesis or general purpose of each experiment is more than likely stated in this opening paragraph. Then just read each question and find the answers in the graphs/charts. Some answers may require you to do easy mental math. You really need to only understand the technical jargon, graphs, and diagrams to do well on the science, as prior knowledge is generally only required for about 2 to 4 questions in the entire science section.</p>