<p>hey guys, this is to all you people who scored in the thirties
i'm a senior i took the act for the first time sophomore year and got
COMP.28 ENG. 30 MATH 25 READ.31 SCI.26 </p>
<p>THEN i studied like crazy, worked on my flaws and took 5 practice tests in a one month study period before my April ACT and got...
COMP. 27 ENG. 28 MATH. 27 READ. 26 SCI. 28</p>
<p>I'm not quite sure where to go from here... i really want a score in the thirties, and i thought i was capable of it. i'm a good test taker, second in my class, and am taking college calculus right now.
I'm not sure how to improve my score any more. suggestions are greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>My flaws:
For English i make silly mistakes
In math i don't remember much of the algebra because i took it so long ago.
i cant get a good pace for reading
and i always have two questions at the end of the science test undone when they call time.</p>
<p>How can you do college calculus without remembering algebra?</p>
<p>You sounded surprised by your scores. What were your scores from the practice exams? Were they close to your actual ACT scores? What books did you use? I asked because some books may give false sense of security.</p>
<p>You should take more practice tests and work out the answer you got wrong. Keep practicing until you don’t make the same mistakes.</p>
<p>I would suggest reviewing a little bit of algebra every day. Personally, I found that simply relaxing during the test and letting my first instinct take over helped. Over-studying can make you more nervous and make it harder to complete simple tasks. (learned this from personal experience)</p>
<p>I remember a lot of basics. graphing is what gets me, that and the concepts that calculus doesn’t reinforce.</p>
<p>I used the prep book created by the ACT people themselves. that and two of the practice tests the ACT gives to my schools guidance department. I think I did 7 practice tests total
i still have 4 of the scores written down
Comp. 28 31 28 30
Eng. 27 32 32 33
Math 31 29 28 28
Read. 30 31 31 32
Sci. 25 32 25 27</p>
<p>Yeah i was surprised… After all that studying to go down! it is horrible!</p>
<p>Sadly, that’s exactly what i did the last time. i thought that would improve my score… but i think what skatergirl said was right. i over studied. i wore my brain out. When i want something i go after it. I was devoting all my free time to studying and ,unfortunately, it was too much for my brain.</p>
<p>I used to struggle with the reading section as well. I would have trouble concentrating on the content of the story, read slower and then run out of time. If I read at my normal pace I wouldn’t remember any of the story. So what I did was, if I wasn’t able to focus on the first story, I flipped through them all until I found one that I felt I could read (usually the shortest one) at my normal pace. That helped warm up my brain for the reading section, and then the longer stories weren’t so bad, and I could remember what they actually said.</p>
<p>Also… read the questions first. This will help you know what to look for while you are reading. This is especially helpful on the act, because the questions on this test do not go in order of the story like they do on the SAT.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that I put all my answers in the test booklet first and then memorize the letters to four or five of the answers at a time to put on the answer sheet all at once. This saves a lot of time, since you are not glancing back and forth from the test booklet to the answer sheet between every single question. Just make sure to fill out the answer sheet right. (you know that the question you are answering corresponds to the correct number). Some people feel that doing the reading section this way will mess up their answer sheet, but once you get the hang of it, it will save you time!</p>
<p>that’s all great advise! thank you so much!!!</p>