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TIPS TO HELP IMPROVE YOUR ACT SCORE 

General tips for studying and for during the exam

• Timed practice exams - Practice exams are the absolute best way to prepare for the ACT. Since each section of the ACT is timed, you should take many practice tests and time yourself to determine your strengths and weaknesses. There are many free ACT practice tests available online and there are also books available with practice tests in them. 
  
• Answer EVERY question - There is no penalty for guessing, so definitely make sure you answer every question to get as many points as possible.
• Learn the tricks - The ACT doesn’t test your intelligence as much as it tests your ability to take a test. I will give you some tips for each section of the ACT below. 
• Use ALL the time given to you - I don’t care if you finished twenty minutes early and you already checked your answers. Check them again. While the ACT isn’t going to determine the rest of your life, it is very important for the next chapter of your life: college. Just buckle down and use all the time given to check and recheck your answers. Reread the excerpts given to you. The students who do best on the ACT aren’t the ones who finish early and take a nap. 

ENGLISH

English is arguably one of the more difficult sections of the ACT because many people truly don’t know grammar very well. Here are some tips to help you improve your english score:

• Revise grammar rules - This section is primarily going to be you identifying the sentence with correct grammar. This will be very difficult for you if you don’t know the difference between a comma and a semicolon. 
  
• If you aren’t sure, the answer is probably the one with the least commas and changes - The writers of the ACT like to trick people by including sentences with entirely too many commas or additions. Usually, the correct sentence will be relatively simple. 
• Vocabulary - Vocabulary isn’t a HUGE part of this section, but there will be a few questions that require you to know the difference between homonyms, so you should be aware of this and study accordingly. 

READING & SCIENCE

The challenge of the Reading section of the ACT is your time limit. If you aren’t a fast reader, you’re going to have trouble. 

• Read the ENTIRE story/text - So many people will tell you it’s okay to just skim a story or only read the sections you’re directly being asked about. This will cause you to run into trouble. If you don’t read the entire thing, you’ll miss vital information that may cause you to miss a question. 
  
• Practice tests are incredibly important! - Like I said before, one of the most challenging parts of the ACT is the fact that it’s timed. The reading section is a section you REALLY need to practice with a timer, because you will not be able to read this stuff at a leisurely pace. You need to be focused, alert, and able to comprehend what you’re reading. For science, you need to be able to read not only normal text, but graphs as well. Practice diligently so that you are able to easily recognize different kinds of graphs and determine what they mean. 
• The answers are all there; you just need to find them - Reading and Science aren’t like the Math and English sections; their answers are all there for you. All you have to do is practice well enough to be able to find them all quickly. 

MATH 

Many people don’t know how to approach the Math section of the ACT. They worry that they need to memorize a million equations or worry that they need to review the past 3 years of math. You don’t! They give you all the equations you’ll need so you just need to be able to apply them. Here are some other tips for this section!

• If two answers are opposites, one of them is almost always the answer - This is true for the ACT in general, but primarily for math.
  
• Don’t overthink it - Many of the questions you will face will not be as challenging as you think they are; you’re probably just overthinking it. Go with your gut and move on. 
• Don’t memorize equations - all equations will be given to you, so you need to focus on knowing how to use the equations. 
• Don’t waste time on questions you don’t understand - There comes a time when you need to just accept that you don’t know how to do a question. When this happens, just make an educated guess if you can, and move on. 
• Don’t panic! - The Math section is going to be short. Much shorter than you want it to be. Don’t panic or let yourself spend too much time on any question or you’ll end up wasting time. 

FINALLY, BE REALISTIC. 

Standardized testing is highly problematic. Those who do best on the ACT or SAT have been afforded good educations that have prepared them well for this exact kind of test. Not everyone has had the same opportunities and possesses the exact abilities to do well on a test like the ACT. While it would be great to get a 30 or higher on the ACT, this isn’t a realistic goal for everyone, and it isn’t even necessary to get into a good school. Unless you want to go to a highly selective school, you don’t need a 30 on the ACT. It doesn’t make you dumb or bad at studying if you don’t get a 30+; it just means that maybe you aren’t a fast reader or your school didn’t spend a lot of time on ACT prep. That’s okay! Getting a 30 or higher on the ACT places you in the top 5% of all test takers- so don’t think that you aren’t intelligent if you didn’t score that high, because it is quite difficult to score that high! 

Great tips! 

If you need more help, you can always turn here.

(via pharmstudies)