Practice Score 27 HELP!

Test Preparation ACT Preparation
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<p>Well, after collecting infromations about which books r good for preparing for ACT, </p>

<p>I read the PR's Cracking the ACT for 2 weeks and</p>

<p>today, for the first time, I took the Practice test that comes along with the PR's Cracking the ACT.</p>

<p>And I got 27 as a composite. I'm planning to take the ACT this Sept.. </p>

<p>the Sept test is going to be my first time taking ACT... </p>

<p>And I'm really hoping for getting the score around 34...</p>

<p>Is it realistic and possible for me to reach my goal...? I have just gotten PR's 1296 ACT...</p>

<p>P.S: I got.....Math: 31 English and Reading: 25 Science: 26</p>

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<p>In my experience, the PR reading section was harder than the real thing. I took one practice test for reading a few days before the ACT, and only scored a 24. You can imagine how I felt about that. However, I felt fine about the ACT Reading and scored a 30. However, English, Math, and Science are a different story. On the practice tests I took for those, I scored a 35 English, 33 Math, and 29 Science. I felt that I did superb on the real thing, especially on English and Math. I was shocked to discover that I only scored a 33 English, 30 Math, and 28 Science. So take into consideration that you just may score lower on the real ACT. I sure did.</p>

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<p>I think it would be pretty hard to increase your Reading/Science score in that short amount of time.</p>

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<p>It’s just your first practice. Relax! Just practice as much as you can in the next two months or so you have before the test.
Try to see, especially in Reading and Science sections, if you can find better strategies for yourself. I found the PR’s strategies for the mentioned sections really useless. Also see where your weak areas are; is it geometry? algebra? organization? grammar?
Try to pinpoint your weaknesses and work on them.
Hope this helps!
Good luck!</p>

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<p>Buy a watch. It does help.</p>

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<p>It was your first time! The important thing is to take lots of practice tests like the SAT. I’m positive that you’ll see improvement after many practice tests.</p>

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<p>thanks! guys… I guess im going to bust my ass to crack this score!</p>

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<p>I’m sure that enthusiam will help ;)</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

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<p>In order to improve english (and reading if you need to) you MUST read a lot of books. Personally I was doing poorly, in my opinion, in english (28) and after about a month break from practice and a lot of reading books i got a 33-34 on 3 official practices.</p>

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<p>What kind of books are you talking about?? I usually read a lots of books such as suspense and mistery… Any recommendation for the genre of the books or specific books??</p>

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<p>I disagree, at least for the English section. This section is, in my opinion, the easiest to study for. My suggestion to the OP is to go back over the English portion of the Princeton Review thoroughly; know the grammar and punctuation rules like the back of your hand. </p>

<p>Then you must put your knowledge to the test- practice using the Real ACT (if you don’t have this, get it) under normal testing conditions, which for English would be 45 minutes. Approach every underlined portion aggressively, and go back over EVERY question that you missed. This is important. Do not just shrug off an incorrect answer as being “careless”, convinced that it won’t happen on test day, because it will. Focus during every practice test, and when you get something wrong, really pay attention to how you should have answered it.</p>

<p>If you can do this, I think everything but perhaps the passage based questions will be easy for you. Good luck :)</p>

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<p>thanks so much…! and for the Reading and Science( which is pretty much like reading), what stragedy would bring the scores up? For science, I see that I do poorly on scientist arguments part</p>

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<p>For the arguing scientists I always read the first scientist argument and then answer the questions pertaining to that. Then I go on and read scientist two and answer the rest of the questions. I find this technique the easier way to avoid confusing the two. For the data representation part of the science section I don’t read anything unless I absolutely have to -all the answers you need are right in the graphs/charts.
I also never do the passages in order.
I can’t guarantee that this will also work for you. It’s kinda like trial and error, you need to see which strategy works best for you.</p>

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<p>Reading: Familiarizing yourself with this section can help you out a lot. For example, when I first started taking the ACT, I was always running out of time, and as a result, I would normally have to blindly guess on a few at the end and would usually score in the mid to high 20’s (which is quite annoying to someone who has high 30’s in every other section). Finally, after taking several practice tests, I realized what the problem was: prose fiction. This part of the reading portion was always the most difficult for me, and I would usually spend much more time than I should have overanalyzing the language and the questions; so, since then, I have always started with the last passage (science) and went backward. This worked to my advantage because I was able to capitalize on the easier (for me, at least) questions at the end and spend whatever time I had remaining on questions in the front that I might have missed anyway. This enabled me to raise my score on the reading section from a 28 to a 34, so I was quite pleased with the result.</p>

<p>After deciding what order you would like to do the questions in, you need to…READ. Think about it this way: there are four passages, each with ten questions, and ALL of the answers are right in front of your face- you just need to find them. But skimming won’t always cut it; you may skip over an important detail and have to waste time later hunting it down. This is why you should read each section with enthusiasm; read each topic as if you were in love with the contents. This may seem difficult or strange at first, but it really helps with retention if you actually believe that you like what you’re reading. If it seems boring to you, the likelihood that you will remember everything you need to is small.</p>

<p>Another problem you may have is being the devil’s advocate. This used to hinder my performance on tests as well- with the given multiple choice answers, I would make arguments for why something COULD be right, instead of why it was wrong. Once I shifted the way I thought, eliminating answers wasn’t as hard anymore. </p>

<p>So, in summary, read quickly, but with interest, and don’t be a devil’s advocate :)</p>

<p>Science: You have to answer 40 questions (from 7 passages) in 35 minutes. This averages to 5 minutes per passage, so you must really work fast. My advice is to not read the introductory material unless absolutely necessary. Go straight to the questions, identify which graphs/chart/data table they want you to use, and then answer the problems accordingly. For the debating scientists passage, you need to approach it the same as you would the reading: read quickly (and underline/makes notes of the important parts of each person’s argument) and then answer the questions. </p>

<p>Make sure that whether you are taking a practice test or taking the real thing that you are wearing a watch, so you can monitor your time and increase/decrease your pace as needed. </p>

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<p>I completely agree.</p>

<p><em>Sorry for the really long post</em></p>

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<p>I completely agree with Vince011 about data/chart parts on science section. And I am getting ideas from your stragedy for arguing scientists. Thanks so much! I will post how much I am improved later after I review the wrong questions and use the stragedies that I gathered from CC.
Thanks to all ppl!</p>