<p>I bought an online study program to take the ACT and I've taken the practice test once while timing myself.
I received a 26 on my English test in 37 minutes; 28 on Reading in 33 minutes; 25 on Science in 23 minutes; and an unfortunate 18 on Math in 50 minutes. I got a Composite score of 24.</p>
<p>This is my first time taking the ACT and I would like to do my best the first time. I'm shooting for at least a 26, and I believe I can easily improve my English and Reading scores. The problem with the math ACT for me is I've never taken Trig. So, what would you suggest I do? I'm not really in the position to buy an expensive book since I bought the online program.
And what would you suggest for Science? I would be happy with my science score if I just improved it by 1 point.</p>
<p>I'm kind of freaking out about my math score, though. Math has never been my strong point and I would really like to strengthen it.</p>
<p>If you can i would buy Barron’s "ACT 36 ". It has a nice topic review and is cheap. If you can not do that khan academy has some good videos for trig-pre cal.
Last i would recommend a good Calculator such as the ti-nspire cx wich can strore formals.</p>
<p>My daughter started with Barron’s, but it was really freaking her out for the math. She wound up using McGraw-Hill’s Top 50 Skills for a Top Score: ACT Math and liking it a lot. We’ll see how it all comes out on Saturday, but it has brought her practice test scores up a lot. (She did find Barron’s quite useful for reading, but that’s one of her strong areas, so it wasn’t as intimidating.) </p>
<p>if u struggle that much focus on answering the first 50 and really pounding them out. That’s around a 30 ish. If you could do that, guess b for the rest of the 10 if you don’t have time. 2or3 might be b and u could end of descent with a +/- 2 or 3. But I know you feel. I consistently get 28-30 in math and English and science. When the reeading comes I get lucky if I can get a 25. I practice and practice. It ducking sucks bro</p>
<p>I haven’t taken trig, either… Or even geometry. Despite that, I’m still getting high 30s on the math sections in practice runs because of khanacademy.com It’s amazing- the dude makes it genuinely interesting (or at least I think so). Plus it’s free!</p>
<p>Ive spent the last few days doing the same, trying to raise my math score on this Saturday’s ACT. My March math score was a 27 and my goal for this Saturday is a 33-36. </p>
<p>I recommend the “Real ACT Prep Guide” from the ACT itself as it has actual tests from the actual test makers. They really help me get used to the questions and get in their heads. Also, sparknotes.com has an amazing ACT review section that reviews almost all of the topics you’ll see on the the ACT.</p>
<p>The key is to keep practicing. My fist parctice test (math only) before any review I got a 28. Then I looked at the 10 or so questions I missed and looked at why I missed them (another reason to get the ACT’s review book, they give a paragraph explanation for every question on every test). If I didn’t know/remember the topic, I would look it up on sparknotes and really learn that topic. I did this with 3 or 4 tests and saw my score gradually increase with each test. Now, my last two tests have been 34 and 35 (only missing two both times, all on silly mistakes).</p>
<p>Even if you know everything though, one reason people miss a lot of questions is that they move too fast. It’s a lot more beneficial to take all 55-57 minutes the first time through than having 45-50 rushed minutes to work then having 10 minutes to skim over your answers.</p>
<p>If you practice, review, learn, practice, review, learn over and over, I promise you’ll see a huge jump in your scores. Good luck on Saturday!</p>
<p>Stew what is your advice for English, Reading and Science? </p>
<p>On the PSAT, my son had M69, CR740, W760. I bought him the Real ACT Prep Guide yesterday. He took the first test cold without prep and scored 31 on Math, but lower on the rest. He just did not have enough time to finish any of the sections. Thanks.</p>
<p>I just stated my English review today, it’s my worst section (28 in March and 28 on my first practice) but I started with math because I knew I could improve that fairly easily. I’d say the other 3 sections are a lot harder to improve on than math is, just because it’s a lot easier to cover all the math topics and formulas than every single type of sentence structure or grammatical situation. English is a lot more broad. I’d say just practice, practice and more practice. Even more so than math it’s important to get familiar with the types of questions and answers on the English section.</p>
<p>Reading and math are probably the hardest to improve because there aren’t hard rules to follow like in the English and math sections. I’m planning on doing the 4 English tests I have left and one or two more science tests (I got a 35 science with no practice in March so I can’t really improve much, I just need a good score for my composite) and seeing how I can improve on those.</p>
<p>Just make sure to practice a lot to get familiar with the questions and make sure to look at the answers you got wrong to understand why you missed them so you won’t miss them again. Othwise, it’s a waste of time.</p>
<p>Awesome! Thank you so much. I’m thinking I’ll practice tomorrow pretty much all day and then take a night to relax since it’s the night before my test.</p>
<p>Are there any websites you would recommend with free problems to practice on? I really don’t necessarily need an ACT website, just something that will flex my skills a little so I get more practice in. I’m obviously going to probably have to take the ACT again, but that’s the wonderful thing about the ACT is you get second, third, and fourth chances. haha</p>
<p>Dani13 - There are usually only four trig problems on the test . . . that’s all. So if you don’t know trig, just guess at those four and move on. Not worth making yourself crazy about it. Focus on the algebra and geometry - that’s 90% of the test.</p>
<p>As for practice the ACT site has a full practice test you can download - for no charge. It’s in the 2011-2012 ACT study guide. (And they’ll be posting another one in July - so grab this one now and get the other one when it comes out!)</p>