ACT tips, tricks, and shortcuts: does anyone know of any? Thanks!?

Question

Is there any way of pacing myself during the test? (Especially the reading and science, not my best subjects on the last ACT I took). How can I answer 75 Q's in 45 min, 40 Q's in 35 min (also with 4 readings for the reading section)?

Please help!

I'll take any tips or shortcuts you may have for ANY SECTION!

(You can even write LONG ANSWERS to this question, maybe the longer and more detailed the better!)

Thanks so much and GOD BLESS YOU!

Answer 1

ok a little trick to this that we found out at our school.

ok first of all you don't get points taken from you for wrong answers you need to keep that in mind. you get a point for answering the question you get another one for getting it right (or more or something) but leaving questions blank is a big No No so the trick is when they announce that you have about 5 or 10 minutes left stop what your doing on what ever question your on and go through and fill out the rest of them (you can either choose to go with answering them all C or randomly choose) once you have them all filled out go back to the one you were originally working on and continue to work them out changing the ones you already fill out with the right answer if you know it. By doing this you don't have to worry about leaving questions blank or anything when they say times up. From what I've seen the ones that have done this at my school have gotten higher scores than the ones that didn't.

I only found out about it this year -_- wish I had known it sooner.

Answer 2

don't spend all of your time on one question thinking instead first do the questions you know the answer and then come back to the unknown question. so you can have  more time to think.

Answer 3

For math, do the first 30. Those are the easiest. Then, go thru the other 30 and find ones you know how to do. After that, make sure you go back and answer the harder ones you didn't answer before.

Reading, as long as you can read fast and comprehend, you'll do fine. What I like to do is do the 1st story, then 3rd story, then go back and do the 2nd story then 4th story. Or do the shortest stories first.

Science, well let's just say science you need to be able to interpret data well. Some of the stuff looks japanese and rediculous.

English, well English is pretty much the easiest section. Don't sweat it.

Answer 4

Don't "christmas tree" it. When you start to run out of time and have a bunch left. Pick one letter for the whole test, let's say choice B, fill in only choice B on the ones you couldn't get to or didn't know right. That way, theoretically at least, you'll get 1 out of every 4 right (or in Math 1 out of every 5). If you "christmas tree" there is a higher possibility that you will miss every single one. So stick to the same choice and you'll do better. And DON'T leave any blank, then your score can't go up at all.

Also, when you're taking the first section, the grammar one, skim the passage first and fix the underlined portions the way you think fits best. Then, after doing this for the whole passage, look at the answer choices and what you did will probably be in there (or some variation of it) this process helps to take out the guess work and speeds things up some. DON'T do this for the reading section. Then read the question and answer choices then go back in the passage and look for key words. Reading the whole passage here is futile and unnecessary (plus really boring).

Sorry if my answer was too long and unusable. I haven't taken the test yet (I take it in the morning) but my oldest brother took it a little over 6 years ago and got a 34 (perfect score in both math and science, even though he didn't give me many tips for those two sorry). These are some of the tips he gave me that he found useful. Hope I could help!

Answer 5

i'm not really good in reading and science but for math i suggest going thru all the problems you know first then go back and answer the ones you didn't know if u have time left over. you don't want to spend more than a minute on any one problem.

i don't think u'll need to worry too much about the time restrictions with the english portion.