Tips for Tackling the ACT

I will gladly tell you my real age (49), weight (115 fully clothed), and yearly income (actually, I don’t know, but if I did I would tell you). I have never tried Botox (not that there’s anything wrong with it) but I have had a chemical peel (ouch). Wait, you want to know my SAT score? Never. Deprive me of chocolate for a year, I still won’t tell. Ever.

Obviously, my SATs were not my most shining moment, which is why I’m qualified to give advice on taking the test. It does make sense; just give me a minute here. The way I see it, since I graduated from Penn State and have a couple of master's degrees, I can’t be as stupid as my SAT scores would have suggested. So why did I do so poorly? As with many students at that time, I had no test prep and being educated by the Philadelphia public school system probably didn’t help. I also had zero test taking strategies, which could have made a world of difference.

It seems that here in the Chicago suburbs most students take the ACTs. The same test taking rules applies with the exception of being penalized for wrong answers. On the SATs you would lose .25 of a point but on the ACTs there is no penalty for wrong or omitted answers. So definitely guess rather than leave a question unanswered.

Most students already know some strategies, such as process of elimination if they don’t know an answer on a multiple choice test, because they have been taking them since the third grade. But, there are some strategies specifically for the ACTs:

• Answer easy questions first and mark harder ones for review (I usually put a little "-" sign in front of the ones I want to come back to). Remember, you don’t get any additional points for a hard question.
• Learn the directions before going into the test so you don’t waste valuable time reading them during the test. The correct answer is the best choice, but not necessarily the only choice, so don’t talk yourself out of your gut answer.
• Keep a close eye on the time.
• Don’t spend more than a minute on any one question.
• If time is running out and you aren’t finished, do the short questions, like vocabulary, and guess on the wordy questions. Fill in a bubble for every single question!
• If you have time left, go back and review the marked questions.

Good luck and hopefully, your ACT score won’t be something you take to your grave.

Sue Schaefer is a certified teacher and Academic Coach. Submit your education questions to Sue at susan.schaefer@academiccoachingct.com and visit her website, Academic Coaching Associates.