ACT Test Prep: Why You Need to Have a Strategy
The ACT is a very particular exam that tests students on very specific concepts across areas of English, math, reading, science, and writing. Because the ACT is an important exam that colleges and universities use to gauge the college readiness of high school applicants, it is crafted very carefully and very strategically. There are many reasons that having an overall plan and specific strategies for each section going into ACT test day will help students to be better equipped to conquer this exam as a whole.
The ACT is a standardized exam that is used to measure a high school student’s readiness for college. Many colleges and universities throughout the United States require students to take either the ACT or the SAT and include their test score with their college application. Preparing for the ACT exam can be incredibly daunting. Why? Because it’s nothing like the tests that teachers give in high school, making it feel foreign and scary.
Because of the key factors that make the ACT unique in comparison to other exams, students should spend a good amount of time on test prep. Test prep includes not only practicing and understanding concepts, but also gaining familiarity with the format of the exam, getting used to patterns in question types and the way that incorrect answers are crafted, and overall understanding of how the test works and the pace at which students need to move in order to finish it.
Why do I need a strategy for the ACT?
Time Constraints
An enormous way that the ACT is different from most high school exams is its time constraints.
For regular tests during the school day, students are generally not penalized if they take any more or less time on an exam than their classmates. In fact, many brilliant students prefer to work through tests slowly, double-checking answers and thoroughly reviewing the content before handing in their work to the teacher. Some teachers will even let students stay later after the class has ended if they are still working through an exam. For these types of students, the ACT is particularly scary.
The ACT is built on set time constraints that change for each specific section. The time constraints require students to work at a rather speedy pace if they are to have time to attempt all of the questions in each section. Many students do not have time to attempt all questions on the ACT, and that is okay. However, for a student that is aiming for a high score in the 30’s on the ACT, it’s imperative that the student have time to attempt all questions on the test.
That’s not to say that students who prefer to work through exams more slowly are unable to do well on the ACT. Doing so just requires knowledge about the setup of the exam and practice working on the content at the required pace. The ACT is comprised of four required sections - English, Math, Reading, and Science - and an optional Writing section. Each section has its own specific time constraint and number of questions associated with it. Here is what the breakdown looks like:
English: 45 minutes to answer 75 questions
Math: 60 minutes to answer 60 questions
Reading: 35 minutes to answer 40 questions
Science: 35 minutes to answer 40 questions
Writing: 45 minutes to write an entire essay BY HAND
For many students, working at the necessary pace can be the hardest part of the ACT. The only way to get better at working within these ACT time constraints is to practice full sections with this time constraint in place. This is a key part of ACT test preparation and studying leading up to test day.
As students work on their ability to work within these time constraints, there are certain strategies that can help them to use their time wisely, know which sections or questions they can skip or miss and not affect their score very much, and more. Check out the section below on strategies for each specific section to learn more about strategies that students can practice with.
How strategy can help with time constraints
There are many ways strategies can help with time constraints. The goal of all strategies is to answer more questions correctly. Some help students to work more quickly and thus have time to attempt more questions. Others help students to identify which portions of a section to focus on and which to skip over based on their strengths and weaknesses.
Length of Test
With the exception of standardized testing at school, most students likely have no experience with taking back-to-back exams for over three hours at a time, much less three hours on a precious Saturday morning.
The best way to prepare for the intensity of testing for such a long period of time is to practice this as well. Practice multiple sections back-to-back during ACT test prep and studying. This is an important part of your test prep strategy, as it will give you a better idea of what it will feel like to do this on test day. You want to practice this as much as possible so that your brain is used to testing for several hours in a row without becoming too fatigued. Students who are not ready for the long morning on test day can find their brain beginning to wander and their scores slowly dropping lower and lower with each additional section.
Remember that your test day strategy starts right when you wake up on the morning of the ACT. In addition to longer study sessions leading up to test day, students can help their brains succeed on test day by doing some easy health and wellness things: make sure to get enough sleep the night before the exam, get up early and eat a good breakfast before leaving for the testing center, bring a snack to eat halfway through the exam during the designated break time, and wake up early on test day so that your brain is awake and ready to go by the time you arrive at the testing center. All of actions will add up and put the brain in a ready-to-go state for testing for over three hours straight.
How strategy can help with tackling long exams
Having a clear plan going into test day will do a couple things: it will keep you focused on each individual piece of the test, and it will keep you from getting exhausted or discouraged by the sheer length of the exam itself. By having a plan and practicing it leading up to test day, your brain will not be surprised by the length of the test, and you’ll know exactly what to expect and how to approach each section.
Consistency of Concepts & Question Types
The ACT really has not changed all that much for many, many years. That means that most aspects of the ACT remain constant with every single ACT exam that is released. This is true for format of the test, concepts examined, types of questions asked, the ways that incorrect answers are worded, and more.
This means that the more familiar you become with the way the ACT is set up, the better equipped you’ll be to tackle it head-on. Conquering the ACT takes a lot more than just knowing geometric equations and being able to read a passage and answer questions. Someone who is REALLY prepared for the ACT will know to be on the lookout for confusing answers in the reading section, will know that the ACT always asks questions about the entire story first because they know you’re more likely to get them wrong at the beginning, and that there are no “easy” wrong answers in the math section. Oftentimes, it is these little tidbit treasures of information that help students improve their ACT scores and reach their full potentials.
So what does that have to do with strategy? Well, you need to have not only a test-day strategy, but you also need to have a test prep strategy. Your test prep strategy should include more than just rapid fire practice of the concepts tested on the ACT because there is SO much more to learn about the test itself to help you improve your score. Your test prep strategy needs to include practicing APPROACHING different question types and LEARNING about the endless ways that the ACT tries to trick you.
Furthermore, you ABSOLUTELY want to have an ACT test-day strategy identified prior to taking your test. In fact, you want to have MULTIPLE strategies — one for each section of the test.
If you go into the ACT without a specific plan for conquering each section, you’re bound to lose track of time, get confused by certain questions, work through questions incorrectly, and overall score much, much lower than your full potential.
BUT, if you go into the ACT with four solid strategies that you have PROVEN work by practicing them endless times with REAL previous ACT tests, then you are TRULY prepared to conquer the ACT.
Here is a quick glimpse at what some good ACT test-day strategies look like for the different sections. Please note: there is not one universal strategy that works for everyone. Just because your best friend can get away with not reading any of the reading stories and still scores a 33 on this section DOES NOT mean that that works for everyone. Use trial and error to identify strategies that work well for you in two areas: 1) they help you to work within the specific time constraint of the section, and 2) they help you to answer as many questions correctly as possible.
ACT English -
The ACT English section is consists of two broad categories of questions: grammar and rhetorical skills.
A Great Test Prep Strategy: Lots of PRACTICE
For grammar questions, your best plan is to practice MANY of these frequently leading up to test day. Grammar concepts are clean-cut, black and white rules. For that reason, the more you practice, the easier they will become.
In contrast, the rhetorical skills questions can be trickier on the ACT. The main reason for this has to do with the way that the ACT crafts incorrect answers. There are generally no “easy” wrong answers that you can quickly eliminate on any of the ACT sections. That means that incorrect answers on these ACT English rhetorical skills questions will be made up of information that is relevant to the story. It’s important to remember that EVERY SINGLE WORD in an answer has to work in order for it to be correct. Keep this in mind as you practice.
Example Test Day Strategies:
Answer rhetorical skills questions last - this can be helpful because you’ll have all of the context of the entire story to aid you in working through these questions last
Read the whole sentence for grammar questions - this is very important because grammar relies on the entire sentence, and oftentimes the ACT will hide commas and other punctuation later in the sentence that will require a specific answer to the question in order to be correct
If a student is struggling to finish the English section, it can be strategic to skip particular questions. If they do poorly on questions about clauses, maybe they will skip many of those in order to help them have time to answer as many more questions as possible
Learn more about ACT English test-day strategies here.
ACT Math -
The ACT math section tests students on many mathematical concepts but focuses on areas related to algebra, geometry, and statistics.
A Great Test Prep Strategy: Lots of PRACTICE
With the math section, if you’re unfamiliar with the concepts on the test, you’re really going to have a hard time. For that reason, it’s important to review and brush up on concepts that you haven’t looked at in a while, and, similarly, if you haven’t taken geometry yet, it’s time to try and teach yourself (or get a tutor) some concepts.
Once you’ve got a solid grasp of the mathematical concepts that are examined on the ACT, you can start thinking about test-day strategies.
Example Test Day Strategies:
Skipping specific questions - the time constraint for this section is pretty intense — just 60 minutes for 60 questions. Given this, many students do not have enough time to complete this entire section. It can be VERY strategic to know in advance which questions you’re going to skip, whether that be questions that test on a specific concept or questions that show up in a certain spot. For example, some students plan to skip questions 51-60 and focus only on 1-50, as the last ten questions are the most difficult.
Have a plan for how to approach specific types of questions. There is not one CORRECT way to get to the correct answer on the ACT math section. You do not have to show your work, and you do not have to create complex equations and calculations in order to get questions right. Sometimes you do, but sometimes you don’t! Always try to come up with the fastest, easiest way to get to the correct answer. Sometimes that’s drawing a picture or creating a table. Sometimes that’s working backwards and testing answer options. Know which type of questions you should approach in which ways to best aid your efficiency in working through this section.
Double-check answers. Once again, there are NO easy incorrect answers. Furthermore, every incorrect answer has been picked for a reason. For the math section, that reason is that every incorrect answer is the answer you get to if you complete the problem incorrectly. For example, if I subtract 3 when I’m meant to add 3, my answer WILL be an option. For this reason, it’s VERY important to double-check answers and avoid the “oh good, the answer I got is an option so it must be right” feeling. To make this more difficult, the ACT math section is the only section that has FIVE answer options instead of the standard four.
Learn more about ACT math test-day strategies here.
ACT Reading -
The ACT reading section consists of four stories, each accompanied by 10 questions. Two of the stories will read like storybook stories, and the other two will read more like textbook passages, as they contain a lot of data.
A Great Test Prep Strategy: Lots of PRACTICE + Trial & Error to figure out YOUR best strategy
The reading section is the one section on the ACT where if you don’t have a strategy ready to go you’re probably not going to do nearly your best. The biggest reason for this is the intense time constraint. Students have just 35 minutes to work through this section, dissecting stories from various categories like natural science and literary prose. That breaks down to 8.5 minutes to read a whole story and answer 10 multiple choice questions. Students generally are not used to being examined on how quickly they can read and comprehend stories, and for that reason this section of the test can be quite difficult and stressful. Students need to identify a specific strategy that works well for them to assist them in getting through as much of this section as possible.
*Note: This section has MANY common strategies, and all of them do not work for everyone. It’s important to remember that people vary in their natural reading speeds, their overall ease of reading comprehension, the amount of reading they do outside the classroom, their overall interest in reading, and more. For this reason, you MUST use trial and error to find a strategy that works well for YOU. You’ll know when you find one if it 1) helps you to get through as much of this section as possible within the time constraint, 2) feels natural and like you’ll be able to use it naturally on test day, and 3) you’re happy with the scores you’re getting during practice when utilizing this strategy.
Example Test Day Strategies:
Read the story first, then work through the questions - this is the “standard” strategy, and I’ll be dead honest and say it DOES NOT work for most students. If there was no time constraint, sure, this strategy would be perfect, but you have to move FAST. Some students decide not to read at all, others end up skimming stories, and some will read the first and last paragraphs. This is why it’s important to test some approaches to find what works for you.
Read the questions first - some students are able to retain the questions in their heads as they read, and, therefore, they can tell when they arrive at a part of the passage that answers a question. The idea behind this strategy is to read the question, remember the question, pause when you get to the part of the story that talks about the question, and then go answer the question before you keep reading. This works best for students who are able to retain the ideas in the question and recognize when the story is associated with the questions.
Change the order of the questions - this is actually a strategy that we recommend that EVERYONE use on this section on test day. There will always be some questions that are super SPECIFIC. These questions ask about things like the role of certain words in the passage or small details in the story. In contrast, there are also very BROAD questions that ask about the story as a whole. These ask you about things like the main idea of the passage, the mood of the narrator, or what is implied by specific information. Whether you have read the story in full or not by the time you answer the questions, you are ALWAYS going to have an easier time with the more specific questions first and saving the broader questions to work through LAST. This is so because as you work through the more specific questions, you’ll continue to learn about the story, which will help you with the broader questions later.
Change the order of the stories. It’s ALWAYS a good idea to try and put the parts of the ACT into an order of EASY to HARD whenever possible. Some students find that they generally perform better on the textbook-like passages, for example. For those students, we would recommend that they work through stories 2 and 4 first and save the harder passages for them for last.
These are just a few examples of reading strategies you can try. We highly encourage students to explore many strategies for this area. This outside the box and come up with a plan for you.
Learn more about ACT reading test-day strategies here.
ACT Science -
The ACT science section is really not what one would expect from a “science” test. In fact, there is very little scientific knowledge required in order to accurately and effectively work through the studies in the science section of the ACT. Rather, students are tested on their ability to understand and interpret datasets and study methods.
A Great Test Prep Strategy: Lots of PRACTICE & overall exposure to data interpretation
Because data interpretation and analysis may not be something that students do frequently during high school, it’s very important to do a lot of repetitive practice of the ACT science passages leading up to test day. Doing so will get students used to the types of studies and charts, graphs, and tables that they can expect to see on the ACT, as well as helping them get better at overall data interpretation.
Once students have a good grasp of how to work through the science studies, it’s time to think about strategy. Once again, this section has a pretty intense time constraint, with just 35 minutes to work through 6 studies and 40 total questions. Students need to have a plan to make sure they can attempt as many questions as possible and as accurately as possible within this time constraint.
Example Test Day Strategies:
Skip any difficult strategies - remember that you want to work through as many studies as possible, and you want to make sure to focus on the ones that are EASY for you. It’s not uncommon to have a super complex study on the ACT science section, and if that shows up as study #2 or #3, you should absolutely push it to the end and work on a different one first. There is nothing worse than spending too much time on something difficult and ending up missing all the questions anyway and running out of time to even attempt the others.
Do the word-based study last (or first). There is always one science study that looks more like the ACT reading section. This section is not necessarily any more difficult than the other studies, but some students find this section slows them down. In particular, it can be a good idea for students to complete this study last if they have an easy time with the regular studies that contain charts and graphs. This is simply because it usually takes longer to work through. In contrast, a student who hates data analysis and struggles with the standard charts and graphs found in most of the studies in this section may prefer to do this study FIRST, as it might be easier and less intimidating.
Skip the last question - similar to the math section, the questions in each individual science study go in an order that is more-or-less easier to harder. That means the last couple of questions are usually a lot more complex than the first handful. Remember that the goal is to work through as much of the section as possible in the 35 minutes, so some students find that skipping the last, complicated question for each study helps them get a higher score, as they’re able to answer more of the questions. Also, that’s only 6 questions missed, which still leaves room for an awesome score.
Learn more about ACT science test-day strategies here.
ACT Writing -
The ACT writing section is the only optional section. Students can choose to write an argumentative essay as the last part of their exam. There are two main reason students will opt to take the writing section of the ACT: 1) it is sometimes an admissions requirement for certain colleges and universities, and 2) it offers students a good idea of their overall writing ability and how they will fare at college-level writing. (Writing is a BIG part of college, so DO NOT underestimate the importance of being able to write clearly and effectively.)
A Great Test Prep Strategy: Get familiar with the format & brush up on how to organize and write an essay
The ACT writing section is set up so that students are given a little background information on a topic and then provided with three separate stances related to the topic. Students will choose one of the these three perspectives to argue in their essay, and it is then their job to persuade the reader of their point. Not only this, but they are examined on their ability to organize an essay, analyze points, and use clear, effective writing that is correct in punctuation and diverse in language use.
There is no way to know ahead of time what type of topic will be provided for the writing essay, but knowing the fundamental parts of a strong essay and making sure to use them will help students to write an effective essay.
Test Day Tips:
Organize your essay BEFORE you start writing it - you need to create an OUTLINE. This step is extra important because this essay is HANDWRITTEN. That means it’s practically impossible to backtrack and add extra information to earlier places. Make sure to get your ducks in a row before you start to write actual paragraphs
Pick the perspective that will be easiest to write about - you are not at all scored based on the perspective you choose to write about. There is no right or wrong perspective. That being said, use the perspective from which you think you can write the strongest essay. This is not always the perspective you agree with.
Use solid examples. The more concrete examples you use throughout your essay, the more persuasive you will be because it will seem like you really know what you are talking about. That DOES NOT mean to make things up.
Learn more about the ACT writing section and tips for writing a great argumentative essay.
How strategy can help when dealing with patterns and repetitive ideas
It’s important to have an identified strategy to help you conquer each individual section of the ACT. As illustrated above, each section is very different and may require very different approaches. Identifying strategies to assist you in each individual section will help you to be more prepared for the test as a whole.
High-Pressure Exam
All students have some experience with higher-pressure tests, whether it’s a super important final exam that’s worth 50% of your grade, or the ACT, which dictates the types of schools you are likely to be accepted to. The ACT is considered a high-pressure exam for some obvious reasons: Your ACT score is how colleges and universities that you apply to will compare you with other applicants. Your ACT test score is a big determining factor in whether you’ll get accepted to programs at certain schools, and it’s also beginning to play more of a role in tuition assistance. On top of these reasons, high schoolers often discuss their ACT scores with their friends and certainly with their families. It is normal for a high schooler to feel a sense of pressure to do as well as a friend or as well as an older brother on the ACT. All of these pieces add up to make the ACT a daunting and stressful experience.
High-pressure situations, not surprisingly, tend to come with some anxious feelings. Students often express heightened anxiety leading up to and during the ACT test due to its level of importance in college admissions. Lowering anxiety related to testing can seem like a difficult task, but this may not actually be the case. In many cases, anxiety can be lessened simply by increasing familiarity with the anxiety-driving factor. Students can be scared to take the ACT because it is made out to be an important, scary exam. However, a student who takes practice tests and becomes familiar with the formatting of the ACT will know EXACTLY what to expect on test day. The ACT does not throw any curve balls. The formatting and type of questioning found throughout the test have remained consistent for many years. While you can not study for the exact questions that will be found on the exam, you can bet your bottom dollar that you should memorize the equation for the area of a circle before you walk into the classroom on test day.
Generally speaking, anxiety is worse while leading up to the task that is perceived as scary than it is during the actual event. For example, someone who has a fear of flying will have immense anxiety leading up to a scheduled flight. However, most people who fear flying express that the flight itself is not as scary as they lead themselves to believe leading up to departure. That being said, the key to lowering anxiety levels on ACT testing day is to ensure students feel well-prepared for the exam from all directions. They need to be familiar with the content and types of questions that they will be asked, the format and any tips/tricks that could help them defeat time constraints, and they need to be knowledgeable about the logistics of ACT day that include the many rules and regulations and where they will need to go for testing. All of this preparation will help the student feel ready for test day, thus lowering anxiety before the test even begins.
How strategy can help alleviate stress related to high-pressure exams
Students who FEEL prepared for the ACT will have LESS anxiety about the test than those who feel unprepared. Knowing this, it would make a lot of sense that the student who has identified strategies for each section of the exam and who has spent a lot of time practicing will feel a lot more confident and have less anxiety than a student who has not adequately prepared.
Just like on any exam, any student can do well on the ACT if they take the time to prepare and study appropriately and become familiar with the layout of the test and the areas being tested. And the great thing about the ACT? You can take it AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT! Sure, no one WANTS to take the ACT a bunch of times, but many students will find that they can continue to increase their score with each attempt. For this reason, many students choose to take the test three to four times. The key to success on the ACT lies in understanding of the many aspects of the exam: the content being tested across all four sections, the formatting and time constraints for each particular section, and specific strategies and tips/tricks.
Good luck, and happy studying!
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