I downloaded a copy of a few Princeton Review ACT practice tests, specifically for the math section. I might be wrong, but…they’re discernibly more difficult than any practice test I’ve taken thus far. Pit it against one of the real tests used as practice in the ACT Red Book (which I love), and it’s considerably more difficult. I stopped 20 questions into the Princeton one because I couldn’t understand why they were asking me to factor quadratic equations so early into to the test. Is there any validity to this?
Maybe. I have found several instances in which practice materials from a non-official source were more difficult than official materials. The good news is that you may indeed fidn the actual test easy by comparison.
All I can say is my daughter found the SAT significantly harder than the ACT. She said the ACT had higher level math, but straightforward. The SAT no matter how many practice tests and even after taking it twice couldn’t match her single time taking the ACT.
She is taking the ACT again next year. Good luck!!
Standardized tests often draw items from a large pool. I had to take the psychology test for graduate school admissions. I had only taken general psych college. Twas intimidating. Nevertheless, I could expect to earn about the same percentage rank on the version of the test I took.
As far as practice versions, I found some included more difficult items than others. I learned the information that was unfamiliarity me. This did not mean I learned the exact question and its correct response. While I was unlikely to encounter the specific item, I surely wanted to learn the larger content and why particular choices were incorrect.
Some practice tests may really be easier because items are drawn from an earlier version.
The ACT may be easier for some because of its clearer connections to the curriculum. If you are better at answering specific schoolish questions than you are at items that pull on learning skills such as reasoning, you may be better at the ACT. Yet, you are still likely to earn very similar scores. Because of the similarity of their ranking of students on college prep, students can take and submit scores from either test. For example, it is unlikely that you score at the 63rd percentile on one and at the 93rd on the other in math.
I actually just finished taking a Princeton Review test from Cracking the ACT 2016 Edition, and I came on here to see if anyone else found the same. (For those wondering I took the fourth test in the book) I thought that the Reading and Science were significantly harder than the actual ACT as well as the Official ACT Practice Tests. Over the past two weeks I have taken three tests, two of them being Official ACT Practice Tests and one being a PR test and my scores were:
ACT Practice Test 1: 35E 33M 31R 29S; 32C
ACT Practice Test 2: 35E 35M 34R 31S; 34C
PR Practice Test: 34E 33M 27R 28S; 31C
I thought the PR tests didn’t ask questions that the ACT would actually ask, and I think that after studying the ACT for so long and having it ingrained in a certain fashion in our minds, anything contrary is foreign. Between the first and second practice tests, I reviewed quite a bit of the Math concepts bc I haven’t seen them in a while, which shows why my scores jumped up two points, but I have to say the PR test was definitely more challenging in Math than the other practice tests I’ve taken.
I agree with @Patrified. I found the PR practice tests to be brutal compared to those in the official Red Book. Here were my scores:
PR 1: 32C (32E, 36M, 32R, 27S)
Official ACT Test 1: 34C (36E, 30M, 36R, 35S)
I found the science section on the Princeton Review tests to be insanely difficult. A lot of the questions on the reading and English section were also quite vague, which is why I lost some points, because I routinely score a 36 on those sections. The math was slightly harder than the real test (I think the reason I had a much higher score was because I really concentrated on it).