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ENGLISH:

1. The shortest, simplest answer is usually the right one. This is because the ACT makers like to throw in

a lot of extra junk to confuse you.

a. The literal shortest answer (fewest words) is right about 70% of the time. So it's not foolproof and notappropriate as a cure-all for someone who's shooting for a high score, but if you don't know the answer or

are stuck between two, it's a great shorthand (since 70% is a lot better than the statistical 25% you'd get

from randomly guessing or 50% you'd get from guessing between two).

b. "OMIT" is right about 50% of the time (since nothing is always shorter than something).

c. Don't add punctuation. Either leave it alone, change it (from a comma to a semi-colon, for instance), or

take it out. Rarely do ACT questions have the problem of being too simple.

d. If you can't understand what an answer choice is saying, it's probably wrong. A lot of people see an

answer choice with a lot of words and punctuation and think "Wow, that looks so complicated and smart. I

can't even read it. It must be right." Give yourself more credit. You've read and understood a lot of edited,

correct English getting up to this point in your life. If you can't understand it or have to read the answer

choice three times to understand it, it's probably wrong.

e. If an answer choice says the same thing twice or mentions something you think is completely

unnecessary and off-topic, it's probably wrong for reasons of redundancy and irrelevancy, respectively.

This will also fall under the "shortest and simplest" rule since the shortest and simplest answer will get rid

of unnecessary things like this.

2. If an answer choice is in the passive voice, it's wrong.

a. The grammatical definition of the passive voice is a sentence where the object (recipient of the verb;

the one being taught, spoken to, written on, etc.) comes before the subject (the actor of the verb; the one

teaching, speaking, writing, etc.). A sentence in the active voice, the correct way, will have the subject

come before the object.

Passive Example (BAD): The dog was walked by me.

Active Example (GOOD): I walked the dog.

b. While you will occasionally have to know part A for trickier "passive voice" questions, usually you can

get away with a simple trick. Almost all passive voice answer choices have the word "by" somewhere inthere. There are occasional legitimate uses for this word on the ACT, but they're few and far between. So

if it has the word "by" in it, just mark it wrong.

c. Be careful: due to its sometimes legitimate contexts, "by" isn't a word that naturally jumps out to us as

wrong like "ain't" or "I is", and a lot of times we'll skim over it. Even after I teach my students this, they still

miss occasional passive voice questions. Not usually because the method was wrong, but because they

didn't see the word "by" since they were reading too fast/not being careful.

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d. It's also worth noting that this will generally tie in with Rule #1, since the active voice is usually shorter

and simpler than the passive voice.

3. Read answer choices "aloud" in your head and take advantage of your "inner ear."

a. A lot of times, you won't be able to pinpoint the exact reason why an answer choice is right or wrong

grammatically ("Gee whiz, that's clearly a split infinitive" or "By golly, that's clearly a case of a superlative

vs. comparative modifier."), but you'll be able to tell that it "just sounds wrong." This is from years of

reading correct English in books and magazines as well as hearing correct English on television. The

inner ear won't usually kick in if you simply "read" it, so take the extra 2 seconds per answer choice and

read it "aloud" in your head.

b. Note: your inner ear isn't foolproof. This is due to our hearing the grammatically incorrect way in

everyday speech. Common examples of this include the use of "whom" (which has a place grammatically

even if people would look at you weird if you said this out loud) and the use of "his or her" rather than

"their" (people almost always say "their" since it's shorter and easier to say, even though it's not always

right).

MATH:

Unlike the other three sections, where you can improve by following a specific method or using broad

strategies, there aren't any shortcuts with the Math. You improve in the Math mainly by doing practice

problems, seeing why you got them wrong, figuring how to do it correctly and reworking the problems (this

is crucial: take the time to rework the problem, rather than just thinking "I got it" and moving on), and then

doing more problems. NO GUIDE IS A SUBSTITUTE FOR DOING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF OFFICIALACT MATH PROBLEMS AND GOING OVER THE ONES YOU MISS APPROPRIATELY.

That being said, there are a couple of things that everyone can benefit from but not everyone uses.

1. Do easy questions first, and don't shortchange them with time or effort.

a. All questions on the ACT are worth the same amount. But the ACT Math (the only section on the ACT

to do this) also generally goes from easy questions to hard questions, with the first 20-ish being "gimme

questions" (if you know the concept being tested, you'll easily get the question right), 21-ish to 45 or 50-

ish being "medium difficulty questions" (they'll throw an extra complication into the problem, or try to trick

you, but nothing too hard), and the last 10 or 15 being "hard questions" (the most difficult questions: manypeople won't even get to these or will have to guess on most of them; for you high scorers out there, these

will be what make or break you).

b. Because people are worried about time, they tend to rush through the easy questions at the beginning,

making simple mistakes that could have been avoided, in order to get to the harder ones at the end. Don't

make this mistake and miss out on easy points due to carelessness.

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2. To parrot your annoying math teacher, show your work! Write down the steps as you work them, draw

out the graph, shape, etc. Use your calculator. You don't get cool points for doing everything in your head

and you don't have anyone to impress. The best test-takers know they are fallable and plan accordingly.

a. The main advantage of this is it minimizes silly mistakes like forgetting negative signs, misplacing

decimal points, adding 4 and 8 to get 48, etc. It's a statistical fact that the majority of questions peoplemiss aren't because they didn't know the material, but because they either misunderstood the question or

made a silly mistake. For high scorers, it's an even higher fraction since they tend to know pretty much all

of the concepts being tested.

b. It also helps conceptually. When you can see a line or shape in front of you rather than being distracted

with trying to visualize it, it's easier to focus on what you need to do. When you have an equation written

down in front of you, you may not know how to solve the problem, but you may know what step to take

first, which will often lead you to the next step and the next step until you've solved the problem. If you try

to do it in your head, you'll often just be stuck.

3. This is a secondary tip borrowed from Princeton Review's "Joe Blogg" style of test-taking. If you don't

know the answer to a question and the question is in the medium/hard section of 21-60, don't guess an

answer choice whose number appears in the question. This method clearly isn't foolproof, but I'd say it

works the majority of the time and is certainly statistically better than the 20% you'd get from guessing

(since there are 5 answer choices in the Math section and 4 everywhere else).

a. This method works in practice even while unsound in theory since ACT makers usually choose to put

those choices in there just on the off-chance you'll see a familiar number and jump on it. They also tend to

engineer the problems with this in mind so that someone with this faulty way of thinking/guessing won't

get the right answer by sheer accident.

b. I'd also stay away from simply averaging the numbers found in the question and guessing that choice,

for the same reasons as above.

READING:

In my opinion, Reading is the hardest section to improve in, since it relies heavily on soft skills like reading

speed. It also tends to have the most genuinely ambiguous questions (even though the test-makers claim

there is a clear answer to every question) and the most unforgiving curve. It was my own lowest sub-score

on my final offical ACT (33 on the Reading), even though it didn't start out the lowest (that honor goes to

the Science).

Anecdotally, this is one of the two sections (the other being the Science, to a lesser degree) where

students tend to have trouble with time even after good preparation. Unlike Math, where you improve in

speed the more you prepare (since you'll be more practiced, spending less time on questions you already

knew before preparation and spending less time stuck on questions you formerly couldn't figure out, now

that you can actually work them) or the English (where people very rarely have time problems), Reading

speed is limited in large measure by your reading speed, appropriately enough.

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That being said, I have gleaned a few tips from my own experience taking the test, teaching it, and

reading various guides on sites like College Confidential.

1. Don't waste your time reading the questions before you read the passage. Not only does this waste

precious time, but your retention of the passage will be worse when you do read it since you'll bedistracted from trying to keep all of those questions in your head.

2. Don't read too slowly, but don't hurry too much either, or else you won't remember anything and will

have wasted the time you did spend. I'd say 3 1/2 minutes is a good benchmark to shoot for that strikes

the right balance between time management and understanding the passage. If you're a fast reader and

can read the passage faster and remember it well, more power to you.

3. Questions can generally be divided into two categories: fact-based (answer can be found in black-and-

white in the passage) and interpretation-based (answer must be found "between the lines"), with about 2/3

being the former and 1/3 being the latter. There tend to be an even greater proportion of fact-based

questions on the more fact-based Social Science and Natural Science passages, while the split is tends

to more 50/50 on the Prose and Humanities passages. In my experience, performance on fact-based

questions can be improved, but performance on interpretation-based questions is pretty strongly reliant on

your natural ability to "read between the lines." Either you see it or you don't. Try not to worry about the

ones you don't and focus on the ones you do.

a. For the reasons I've detailed above, the Social Science and Natural Science passages tend to be

easier for most people, but not for everyone.

b. If you KNOW you won't have enough time to do all 4 passages, I'd do the passages from easiest to

hardest, based on your personal preferences. This is because it's obviously better to have time to do theone you usually get 8 out of 10 on rather than the one you usually get 4 out of 10 on. But if you usually

have extra time, barely finish, or almost finish (1 or 2 questions left), I'd recommend going and ahead and

just doing the passages in order, since it won't be worth the mind game you're playing with yourself.

4. To find answers faster and more accurately, I recommend the "key word" method. A lot of people try to

re-read the passage for each question and find its answer. Not only does this waste a lot of time, it

actually lessens your ability to actually pinpoint the answer's location since you don't really know what to

look for. The "key word" method is detailed below.

a. Find a "key word" in the wording of the question. Don't pick a word like "he" or "is", for obvious reasons.

Also, if the passage is on wildlife management, don't pick a word like "wildlife" or "management." Thereason for both of these is the same: the word will show up in a lot of contexts not related to the question

or the answer.

b. Instead, pick a word that seems unique to the question. For example, say you have a question like

"According to the passage, what is NOT a negative externality of wildlife management?" A good key word

would be "externality". Note: the actual wording in the passage may be something like "externalities", but

will almost always be something either identical or very visually similar to your key word.

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c. Once you have your key word, quickly skim the passage for that specific word. If you're looking for a

specific word, it will tend to jump out at you, making it easy.

d. Once you've located the key word, start reading a little before it (a couple of sentences) and read until a

little after it. This is called "being aware of context" and the ACT-makers will often put the answer before orafter where the answer's subject mentioned explicitly to make sure you're being circumspect.

e. It's also worth noting that the key word may show up several times in the passage, and the answer may

not always show up in the first instance every time. Don't give up if you don't see it, and don't waste a lot

of time re-reading the same bit over and over if you've already followed part d.

5. Correct answers tend to be moderate in both tone and belief. So if an answer choice could be viewed

as offensive or extreme, it's probably not right. Buzzwords to watch out for include "always," "never,"

"perfectly," and other absolutes like them. An answer choice containing those words probably isn't right.

6. If you've done the strategies I recommend and are still having problems with time, I recommend trying

speed reading, even though it doesn't work for everyone. There are many forms of speed reading, and it's

difficult to explain in writing, but my best attempt goes like this:

a. People tend to read slowly not because they are inherently slow readers, but because they get

distracted, especially with boring ACT passages. Their eyes lose their place, they start to think about

other things, they slow down and then speed up artificially, and so on.

b. To help focus the eyes, maintain mental focus, and enforce a certain reading speed, trace under the

line you're currently on at a steady speed you want to read at. Don't make your pencil follow your eyes:

that will just distract you. Instead, take advantage of the fact that our brains are evolutionarily wired tonotice moving objects: your eyes will be "bothered" by the moving pencil and will be naturally drawn to it.

To speed up reading, simply move your pencil faster.

c. Don't underestimate the mental advantage of doing this. Doing this puts you in "ACT mode", reminding

you why you're here and keeping you focused.

d. I've had mixed results with this. Some people cut their passage reading time from 6 minutes to 3

minutes, giving them 12 extra minutes over 4 passages that they can now spend answering the questions.

I had one guy go from a 21 to a 29 on the Reading using this tactic. More typical improvement is from 4

1/2 minutes to 3 1/2 minutes, bringing about an estimated 2 point improvement, with the other 2 points

(my students' average improvement is 4 points) coming from the other strategies I've listed. Anecdotally,I'd say it helps about 60% of people. But if you're already reading at a pace of 3 1/2 minutes per passage

or faster, or if this method just distracts you and slows you down, I wouldn't bother with it. There is no

question that while this method helps most people, it does hurt some people, and you should follow your

best judgment.

SCIENCE:

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