how i studied for the ACT
alrighty listen up kiddos this might not apply to you this year because i think colleges are not requiring standardized testing because of the coronavirus but i’m gonna post this anyway
lemme first tell you that i didn’t study for the ACT the first time i took it. i took it in february, during the school year, so i just didn’t have time to prepare. i also didn’t really know how to prepare.
i actually liked the ACT a lot more than the SAT; it just seemed easier to me. so, the second time around, i decided to actually study (for more than one reason). i got this big a** prep book that actually helped. it helped give me a grasp for what was on the test and how the questions were formatted. no, i did not go through every page of that book, only maybe a fourth.
there were also multiple practice tests in that book. i just did some of the science and english sections because those were the areas i thought i could easily improve and i would say that they helped!
since i thought that i could easily improve in the english section, that is what i mostly studied! i watched soooo many khan academy videos and even studied with one of my friends. she had gotten a tutor to help her study for the ACT and so she got some good tips and info that she shared with me for the english section.
i decided to work on the english section the most because it’s simply identifying what’s right and wrong in a sentence. it’s basically black and white. plus, i’ve always loved reading and writing so it was right up my alley. i also didn’t want to try to study for math because that spans over a bunch of subjects. english grammar is pretty black and white so if you know the rules, you’re pretty much golden.
just by studying (mostly) english and a little science, i was able to raise my score on the ACT from a 26 to a 30, allowing me to get more scholarships at the college i’m going to in the fall (wahoo!!!). note that my english score went from a 25 to a 34 (the ACT is scored out of 36). all my other scores also rose, helping to jump to a 30, but i would say that that dramatic jump in my english score really helped to boost my overall score.
for you, i would suggest identifying what sections you need the most work on or the ones that can easily be improved (like english). focus mostly on those sections and if you get high scores on those, your overall score will most likely increase.
best of luck to all of you taking the ACT, you’ll do great :)
xo- gg
