I’ve taken the ACT 3 times now and the score I got last was a 33. (33 English 36 Math, 29 Reading oops, 33 Science). Can you guys help me out with how to study to achieve my dream score? Any advice is helpful
study
I assume you’ve signed up to get your test booklet back, so carefully review it. Have you raised it yet, or is it always 33 composite?
Freshman year I got a 24, sophomore year I got a 30. Actually I didn’t sign up to get my booklet back (oops), is there anything else I can do?
That’s hard to say. You are already at 99th percentile with a 33!
@Roxas3100
I wrote an indepth article on the mindset and strategies you need to get a 36 on the ACT: http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-get-a-perfect-act-score-by-a-36-full-scorer
Here are the main points:
-You have to want to improve. You have to work hard. There’s no way around this. There are no easy “tricks” to get you those last points. Everyone has different kinds of weaknesses at this level, so a one-size-fits-all strategy isn’t always going to help you.
-You need to focus on where your weaknesses are. At a 30 level, you’re missing 10% of questions on each section. Every one of these mistakes represents a weakness of yours, and an opportunity to improve your score. Most students don’t do this well enough, and so they make the same mistakes over and over again - thus failing to improve their score.
-Think about it like a dental cavity - what you see on the surface is just a small discoloration, but the cavity actually runs deep. The dentist needs to drill and clean out the cavity completely, then fill it - otherwise the tooth will continue to rot.
-Similarly, each question you miss is like a cavity. You missed a question for a reason - either you didn’t master the underlying content, you didn’t know how to approach this type of question, you made a careless mistake, etc. What most students do is merely understand how to solve that particular question and how to get to the answer. This isn’t enough! There’s a rot deep down that you have to clean out.
–If you missed a Reading question, for example, this is a chance to figure out what your weakness is. Is it that you misread the question? Or did you miss a clue in the passage that supported the answer choice? Once you figure this out, you need to drill that weakness with more practice until it no longer becomes a weakness. Cleaning out the cavity.
Read the full article for more explanation of these concepts: http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-get-a-perfect-act-score-by-a-36-full-scorer
We’re also going to be writing specific strategy guides for each of the ACT sections soon, but you can read the ones we wrote on how to get 800 on each SAT section.
You can purchase your test/answers through the Test Information Release. It may help you identify trends in areas of weakness. Here is the link
http://www.actstudent.org/scores/release.html
You have a great score at 33. Focus now on upping the Reading score.
Barron has a book called Barron’s ACT 36: Aiming for the Perfect Score. Basically, it goes past the basic information presented in the other study guides and teaches you the most challenging concepts that may appear on the test, suited for someone with a top score looking to bump it up a little bit more.
I won’t try to tell you that it’s an absolute necessity, but it’s definitely an option for you to consider (personally, I think it helped me because I ended up with a 35 non-superscored).
I wouldn’t waste my time, it won’t help in admissions, and it would only have a negative impact imo, if you’re already in the 99th %ile, why would you take it again to STILL remain in the 99th %ile
amen to what Allen said
You said you’ve already taken it three times? Colleges don’t like to see more than 3 times max. So I wouldn’t bother. They know those last few points are more luck than skill anyways - a 33 means you missed 10 questions at most on the whole exam.
^What evidence do you have that colleges don’t like to see more than 3 times?
I would not worry about taking in another time - just delete your lowest score and check to make sure not on your HS transcript. Your 33 is excellent but if you want to give it another shot go for it.
Uhhh… March 2015…
! Thanks… March 15th. But , in closing, my three kids liked ACT36. Costs less than $50. Each added 3 or 4 points.
@aeather – only a small number of schools request to see all scores. The rest don’t care.
If your goal in getting a 34 is to qualify for a competitive merit scholarships then it IS absolutely worth it. In Ds case that one point was worth about $60,000. I’d say it was worth it.
Free online resources and productive studying
Literally just do a bunch of reading practice tests then take it again. If you keep everything else the same and raise reading to a 32, you’re looking at a 34
I struggled a lot to get into the 1500 or 2300 zone for SAT… I’ve done tutoring sessions, SAT Boot camp (LOL asian af!), and took sm practice tests with little improvement. I’d say the best thing to do (for me this worked, idk if it’ll work for ACT) is to go over what you got wrong and actually justify why the correct answer is right, and why the answer you chose was wrong. Don’t just look at the correct answer and nod-- know why you got it wrong. I did this mostly for reading section if you couldn’t tell
I got a 36 and one of the things that I simply can’t stress enough is that you must read the question very, very carefully