i took my first act on april and got a 30 lol. i did study for it, but i didn’t get the result i wanted.
english: 35
math: 31
reading: 26
science: 28
obviously my problem areas are reading and science, but they are soo hard to improve since they don’t have any concrete rules! i’m taking the june act, but i don’t expect a 34. hopefully a 32, but when i take the act again in sept/oct, i definitely would like a 34. any advice?? what are some good prep books for reading and science? thanks!!
I can’t offer help , my son got a 29’and he wants to bring up him smscience (27) and English (26). I fe l like more practice tests for science might help but any thoughts on English?
when i took my first unofficial practice test, i scored a 26 on english. it was actually the easiest section to bring up for me. i realized that i didn’t know a lot of the grammar rules, so i read through all of the rules in my prep books. after that, i would do practice sections that focused only on the skill i happened to be studying. as i learned all of the rules, i started applying them in my daily life (essays, emails, texts, etc) and was able to notice grammatically incorrect sentences without batting an eyelash. after learning all of the rules, i focused on speed and accuracy on real english sections. i used ■■■■■■■■.com to get practice sections, and i started scoring in the mid 30 range. the questions i would mess up the most on were the inserting/deleting and inference type questions at the end of the passage. as i kept doing more practice english sections, i started getting more accurate. i always had about 15 minutes left over for the english section, so i forced myself to recheck every single question. hope this helps! there are a lot of articles and youtube videos that teach the most commonly tested act grammar rules.
Practice do help. For the science part, go through the question and look at the answers first. Don’t start with the text first. It is all about data interpretation and you often can find the answer directly fron the graph after the question.
aw i just read over my post and awwwwww. i just got my june act scores back, and i was hoping for at least a 32, but i got a 33! im elated and ready to take on whatever the september act throws at me, so i can get a 34!
Nice, yo! Congratulations!
guys, i just got my september act score back, and i got my 34!!! you can do whatever you set your heart on!
Congrats! I moved from a 31 to a 34
@AnthonyZ yay!!! congrats
@AnthonyZ @chigirlri how did you prep to get that movement in scores? I have a kid that got a 31 end of sophomore year with minimal prep. He will take again spring of junior year and debating prep options.
My prepping method was very meticulous… for the SAT. I studied about 75 hours for the SAT using the prepscholar program, but I didn’t end up improving my score as much as I liked. I decided I might as well take the ACT while I was at it. I took a practice test the week before the actual test, and from there I think it was all luck.
In terms of what I was focusing on during the official test, I am a very slow worker so I tried very very hard to improve my work pace for the reading section. When I got to a difficult question, I tried not to spend too much time on it, because that has prevented me from finishing the section in the past. I also noticed that the questions on the ACT are not as specific as the SAT, so I stopped reading into the passages deeply, which I was doing for the SAT. I ended up going from a 27 to a 35 in reading, which I do believe was pure luck. For the science section, I skipped the initial passages entirely and instead went straight for the questions, referencing graphs and charts as necessary. Over all, I just tried to implement strategies and focus on my weaknesses during my very minimal prepping period for the ACT.
Hope this helps.
On my first ACT I got a 29, with E: 32 R: 32 M: 25 S: 25. The next test I took a barely improved to a 30. I was so upset but willing to give it one more shot on the June Test. I improved to a 34 composite with E: 36 R: 34 M: 30 S: 34. The thing that definitely put my score over the 30 mark was focusing on the math and science section. The trickiest thing about the ACT overall is definitely the timing. I saw a private tutor a few times before my last test and he gave me some great pace exercises for the math and science sections. For each of the tests I would give myself a ten minute timer and try to complete up to two passages for the science and try to get at least 12 math questions done. This made me naturally speed up my pace on these two sections and at the end of the science section I had over 5 minutes left to check over my answers. On the science section I only got 2 wrong and I think the main reason for this was that I didn’t second guess myself. I looked directly at the questions and didn’t refer to the passage until I knew for sure what I was skimming for. Once I found an answer I thought was right I filled in the bubble and didn’t think about that question ever again until the last five minutes when I checked over a few of the tricky ones. As for the math section, learning how to do certain tricks on the calculator like graphing answer choices to try and eliminate certain choices or finding ways around problems.