<p>Hello, parents!
I recently received my ACT scores from my first time around. I scored a composite score of 30, and my breakdown was 34 English, 34 Math, 27 Reading, and 25 Science. I did not finish the reading section and was in self-destruct mode for science. If you could please share any successful strategy that your child has/had, it would be much appreciated! I know it's a stretch, but I'm hoping to boost my score to a 33 composite.</p>
<p>What year are you at and how much preparation have you done before your first ACT attempt?
My D got 31 in practice at the end of sophomore year. After a summer of preparation doing 20-30 practice tests, she got a 35 in Junior. During the summer, she did daily section practice and went through the answers and explanations for each question she missed. She did one full timed practice each week or every other week to monitor the progress. The science section is more about test skills. Doing more practice will help. You may try to go through the questions and look for the answer from the data directly without spending much time on the text.</p>
<p>My D, a really fast test taker, didn’t quite finish the reading section either, though she got a 33. That section can be long if you pause and deliberate at all. The trick is to not mentally self-destruct if that happens.</p>
<p>As a counter-example, my son took several practice ACT tests, scoring between 28 and 33, then got a 26 on the real one. He wasn’t close to finishing the reading portion and did kind of like you. Some days are just better than others.</p>
<p>During my D’s test preparation, the practice scores fluctuates initially but became quite stable in the last few tests when she reached a plateau. At the end, all section scores were within 1 point from practice to practice. So when you see you are getting certain section scores up and down a lot, you should put more effort into that.</p>
<p>Use the xiggi method (search for it on CC). Practice with lots of real tests. Science on the ACT, is according to my son, really about graph-reading/interpretation rather than scientific knowledge. If you get some help and practice that, you will do better.</p>
<p>If you’re scoring 25 on Science, you should be skipping a passage. Usually, if there’s a “Scientist 1 vs. Scientist 2” passage, that’s the one to skip. Otherwise, just skip whichever one looks hairiest to you, and fill in those bubbles before you move on to the other 6 passages.</p>
<p>Took about 15 practice tests and scored a 35. I almost ran out of time for the Reading portion as well, but having a watch in front of me (set to 12:00 each time a new section starts) and doing all the easy questions first then moving back to the harder questions helped me quite a bit. Science is mainly and understanding data. I found it helpful that I had already conducted some of the experiments shown on the test in AP Chem. </p>
<p>@chickenfiesta Where did you find 15 tests? </p>
<p>Hi, I found these strategies helpful: <a href=“http://bestactprep.org/act-strategies”>http://bestactprep.org/act-strategies</a>. They helped me score a 34 on the ACT.</p>
<p>Also, you can find a lot of different practice tests here to help you figure out which areas you can improve in: <a href=“http://bestactprep.org/printable-act-practice-test-pdf/”>http://bestactprep.org/printable-act-practice-test-pdf/</a>.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>@Shawbridge - Isn’t the xiggi method for SAT?</p>
<p>The basic methodology still works for the ACT. </p>
<p>How much didn’t you finish for reading?</p>
<p>@YouAreAllAwesome, here is a quote from @carolyn:</p>
<p>It’s quite simple: buy the real SAT book put out by the college board (there’s one for the new SAT). Do not use any other prep book as they do not use “real” questions. Only the College Board’s own book does.</p>
<p>Break the tests in the book down into separate sections. Take each section one at a time. Do not worry too much about time in the beginning. After you have finished each test, review the answers and the explanations carefully for each problem, even the ones you got right. This last is VERY important as you want to make sure you know WHY you got each problem right so you can start to recognize patterns and similar questions.</p>
<p>Repeat the process with each section and every part of the book. Then retake the tests again, and do the same.</p>
<p>My daughter did this on her own for the reading and writing sections. She worked with a tutor using this method for the math. Her scores stayed the same for writing, but rose 80 points for both the reading and writing sections over her PSAT scores last October.</p>
<p>She also took a princeton review type class, but found it so useless that she didn’t go back after the first three sections (and too late to get a refund!). She felt it was more useful to spend the time studying on her own.</p>
<p>By the way, the College Board has a service where you can get your essays for the Real book tests scored online. I believe it is about $60 to register for this service. The same service also provides detailed explanations for each question in the real books. Don’t have the exact link but look on the College Board site under “test prep” and you should find it.</p>
<p>Here is a link to a downloadable explantion, presumably by xiggi himself but I’m not sure about that: <a href=“Xiggi Advice”>Xiggi Advice;
<p>We didn’t find any real difference between the prep needed for SAT and ACT.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the advice everyone! @candy - They called 5 minutes and I hadn’t started reading the last passage… I just retook it through my school, and I got a 31 (34 English, 30 Math, 32 Reading, 26 Science). I finished the reading this time(: I will be retaking it again in June, and I will be praying for a 33. The best thing that I can do is probably to keep taking practice tests. I really appreciate everyone’s listed study tools! </p>