<p>Ok so I took the ACTs last june and I scored a 30. I got 35 in English, 34 in Reading, 28 in Math, and a 23 in science. I am retaking in September, and I have been using a prep book for science and math.
I am planning on international studies, so will a dramatic difference like that really hurt me?</p>
<p>I’m a 35/24’er. I feel your pain.</p>
<p>not to take away from your great subscores in english and reading, but yes the lower scores in math and science will hurt you. the composite score is the most important part.</p>
<p>you clearly owned reading, so just think of science as basically the same thing, but don’t let the confusing words and concepts get to you. you never really have to understand the complexity of each experiment, mostly just use the tables, graphs, and pictures provided. overall, just keep practicing. science takes time to click, as it especially for me. i started on a 19 and then 5 months later i got the 31 i was shooting for.</p>
<p>overall though, 30 is a great score so don’t be mad if you can’t raise it too much. but im sure you will be able to raise math. there’s a very limited number of types of operations the ACT expects you to be able to do on the math test, so just master them. get used to the word problem format and just go back to the basics of algebra, geometry, etc. this was another section i dramatically improved: 25 -> 33.</p>
<p>best of luck</p>