<p>First ACT:
English: 36
Math: 30
Reading: 25
Science: 26
composite: 29</p>
<p>Second ACT:
English: 34
Math: 33
Reading: 34
Science: 35
Writing: 10
Composite: 34</p>
<p>English-Can’t give a lot of advice here. Make sure you know comma rules and pace yourself. Also look for redundant answers, and wordiness. Sparknotes has a concise (online) review on punctuation which you would probably find very helpful.</p>
<p>Math: Make sure you know basic geometry/algebra well, and try to get ahead as fast as you can at the beginning. Most of the questions aren’t designed to trick you like the SAT, but you do have to work faster. Just put a dash next to the ones you think you might have missed, and circle the ones you don’t know how to do. If you have time at the end (you should if you do it right) you can go back and check a lot of the ones with dashes and all of the ones with circles before time is called. The last ten questions always take significantly longer, so make sure to account for that. </p>
<p>Reading: The reading questions for the ACT are a lot more straightforward than the SAT; while the SAT asks a bunch of inference questions, the ACT asks things which can be directly found in the text. Even though you have to go way faster, it also means you don’t need as strong as an understanding. Speed read through each passage in about 3 minutes, circle everything that you think looks relevant, and answer the questions in 5. Pay close attention to characters-introductions, actions, development, etc-and less to the setting. Make sure not to reread anything. The passages in the ACT are far less convoluted than the SAT and a lack of comprehension in a sentence or two won’t hurt you nearly as much as not finishing. Again, put a circle/dash next to the ones you don’t know, and don’t spend more than 8 minutes on one passage. Do the narrator’s opinion/main idea questions last because the other questions help bring it all into perspective. You may have to make an educated guess on one or two but you’ll be able to come back and look at them in the last three minutes. Even if you don’t have time in the three minutes at the end to check all of them, educated guesses are a lot more helpful than random guessing in the last 15 seconds. </p>
<p>Science: Don’t spend more than 5 minutes on each passage. That’s the average pacing you have to set for yourself, but it’s probable that the contrasting scientists one will take you a little bit longer. I like to skim the passages for laws and theories for about 20 seconds and then go to the data. A lot of people like to skip the reading completely, but I used to end up going back to look for whatever laws they were talking about in the passage after anyways. If you get stuck on a question, pick one and move on-you want to have time to go back after, and you don’t want to run out of time because you stared at one question for five minutes. I only finished 3 reading passages and 5.5 science passages the first time and had to guess on everything at the end. I had about 5 minutes at the end of each one this time.</p>
<p>Writing-Make sure you have a strong opening, and a thesis statement. If possible, make references to relevant figures. I only wrote 4 paragraphs over one and half pages, but got a 10 because I quoted Sir Thomas More and Horace Mann as evidence. It’s also absolutely essential that you address the counterargument-you’re effectively writing a persuasive essay, so you won’t score perfectly if your writing is completely one sided (the comment on my essay literally said “Your essay showed recognition of the complexity of the issue by addressing counterarguments”). A lot of the prompts from the ACT relate to education and some sort of issue, so quotes from people like Horace Mann can literally apply to all of them. Mine wasn’t even about school-it was on lawmakers-but the quote still applied.</p>