<p>So I sat down and took my first practice test today. My breakdown was as follows: 34 English/25 Math/36 Reading/24 Science.</p>
<p>It's pretty clear that Math and Science are my weak areas. Honestly I'd be happy if I could raise both a few points points--that would boost my composite from 30 to 31-32. I have until this Saturday to accomplish this.</p>
<p>I only missed 4 questions on Math before problem 41. From there, it all goes downhill: I missed 14 between 41 and 60. At this point I had very little time left, and felt very unfamiliar with the concepts. Any advice? It seems like I need to review the ones I got wrong/familiarize myself with the more advanced material. Is it even worth retaking the entire Math section, or should I just focus on the last 20ish?</p>
<p>I performed consistently bad in Science. I'm a freshman in college. My academic experience with science thus far is Biology my freshman year of high school, and Physics my Junior year. I didn't do particularly well, but I didn't do particularly bad either; I got a B in both courses. However, I felt completely out of my league for the test. I literally did not understand a single concept; I feel like I just got extremely lucky with guessing. When it started talking about protein folding, I nearly **** myself. Anyways, I don't really know how to improve upon in this area. I've never taken a Chemistry course, and it seemed like much of the material was based on it.</p>
<p>If anyone has some advice for improving my scores--especially my Science score--that'd be wonderful. In return, I'll write you a limerick or something.</p>
<p>How long were you spending on the early questions in the math section? It sounds to me like you were too cautious on the early questions and then ran out of time on the latter portion of it. The ACT orders their math questions on a difficulty gradient. </p>
<p>Science is hard to magically improve on, especially if you’ve never taken a chemistry course. ACT expects that you have already taken a standard physics, chemistry, and biology class. Try not to worry so much, you’ll do better if you calm down. The entirety of the science test is testing how well you can interpret stuff that you’ve never seen before. (I got a 36 on science, and trust me, I had no idea what they were talking about in half the questions.) It’s all about interpretation, and everything that you need is already in the material. The answers are right in front of you, you just need to pick them out. </p>
<p>Math isn’t something that you can study for in a week. It’s testing your knowledge of four years of high school math, you can’t cover that in one week. If you’re lucky, you’ll have done exceptionally well on certain subject areas (I.E. algebra and graphing) but poorly on the other section. That way, you can study the one that you did the worst on. If your scores were well distributed though, then you should try to take some tests and learn the tricks. (Sure, you could solve this problem with algebra: If a school play sells 500 tickets and earns $1,244, and adult tickets cost $3.50 and kids tickets cost $2.00. How many kids tickets did they sell?.. Or… you could just plug in the five answers to solve it in less time.) Likewise, you can graph some questions to solve them faster. It’s all about managing your time to efficiently answer the most questions that will get you the highest score.</p>
<p>Don’t read the passages in the science test except for the debating scientists if you don’t have too. Making connections in the data is important, understanding everything is not.</p>
<p>Why are you taking the ACT as a freshmen in college? I don’t mean to sound rude or anything, I’m just curious.
The math is really all repetition, I would go over some of the basic math functions and practice problems. Make sure you have a watch when you take the test. You should really be about 35-40 questions in when you hit the halfway mark so that you’ll have time to do the harder ones.
Also, don’t forget that plugging the answers in is sometimes faster than solving the actual problem. But this can sometimes shoot you in the foot as well so don’t rely too heavily on it. </p>
<p>As far as science goes, only read what you have too. Don’t over analyze the questions. The answer is always right in front of your face. Don’t be intimidated by the fancy words and weird concepts.</p>
<p>I’m transferring and I got into a pretty mediocre state school with a low SAT score. I want to be a competitive applicant at the schools I’m applying to, so a 31+ on the ACT would really help my application.</p>
<p>That’s some great advice. I think you’re right: I’m spending too much time on the easy Math questions. If I hurry up on them, with more time I think I can solve the more difficult ones.</p>
<p>Don’t read the passages for science? I can try that. I think a lot of it is psychological–I get very overwhelmed very quickly and probably lose points because of it.</p>
<p>I still have two more science/math sections I can practice. I’ll be trying tomorrow (today I reviewed all of my wrong answers and figured out where I went wrong) and seeing if my score raises.</p>
<p>That’s a great idea UofRbound! I’ll try it.</p>
<p>I posted a few minutes ago, but don’t see it, so must have goofed.</p>
<p>A student I know re ACT prep, read a passage in a book to treat science like reading. Basically, forget about the science aspect treating it like a reading passage/problem. I don’t know if that will help you, but it did in the other case. Do you have a practice section or two of science that you could try it on?</p>
<p>just be sure that you don’t go too fast on the easy math problems. Pay special attention to what the questions are asking. The word problems can really get you.</p>