Figuring out what — and what not — to take to the ACT
Dealing with unusual circumstances
Taking a chance with dumb-luck guessing
Knowing what to expect on the ACT and understanding how the test’s scoring works
Repeating the ACT if necessary
Are you the type of person who jumps into the cold water all at once instead of dipping your toe in a little at a time? If so, do we have a table for you! Table 1-1 gives you an overview of the ACT and shocks you with the entire kit and caboodle all at once.
If you add up the numbers, you find that you have 216 questions to answer in 205 minutes; 205 minutes is 3 hours and 25 minutes, or nearly 3½ hours. You get one 10-minute break between the second and third tests (the Mathematics and Reading Tests). If you opt not to take the optional Writing Test, you get to walk out right after the Science Test. If you include the time in the classroom spent giving out the tests, explaining the directions, checking your ID, answering the Interest Inventory questions, and so on, your whole morning is shot. You may as well figure on giving up 4 to 4½ hours for this test.
What to Take to the ACT
If you can’t borrow the brain of that whiz kid in your calculus class for the day, you’re stuck using your own. To compensate, be sure that you have the following with you before you leave for the ACT test center:
Admission ticket: You can print your ticket when you register online. If you register by mail, you’ll receive your ticket in the mail by about two weeks before the exam. If you don’t have the ticket by then or if you got it but lost it, call the ACT Test Administration at 319-337-1270.
Pencils: Take a bunch of sharpened No. 2 pencils with you. You may also want to take a big eraser (nothing personal — everyone makes mistakes) and a small pencil sharpener. Mechanical pencils aren’t allowed.
Map or directions: Go to the test center a few days before the actual exam, and scope out your driving route and parking area. Often, the ACT is given at high schools or colleges that have parking lots far, far away from the test rooms. Drive to the location a few days in advance, park your car, and see just how long it takes you to get to the room. You don’t need the stress of having to run to the test room at the last minute on test day.
Clothing: Rumor has it some eccentric kids are lobbying for a special Nude ACT. Until it becomes available, though, you need to have some sort of external covering. Take a few extra layers. Schools that host the ACT often turn off the heat for the weekend (the ACT is usually offered on a Saturday), and the test room can be freezing cold. Alternately, in the summer, schools turn off the air conditioning, making the room boiling hot. Dress in layers and be prepared for anything.
Photo ID: Showing the birthmark your boyfriend or girlfriend thinks is so cute isn’t going to cut it with the test proctor. You need to upload a photo when you register for the test and bring a photo ID (student ID, driver’s license, passport, military ID, FBI Most Wanted mug shot, whatever) to the exam. If you don’t have a photo ID, you can bring a letter of identification from your school.
Eyeglasses: Students taking the ACT frequently forget their reading glasses at home and then squint for the four long hours of the test. The ACT is enough of a headache on its own; you don’t need eyestrain, as well. If you wear contacts, be sure to bring cleaning/wetting solution in case you have to take the lenses out and reinsert them. (Hey, all those tears can really mess up your lenses!)
Snack: True, you get only one ten-minute break between the Math and Reading Tests, but that’s enough time to gobble down something to jump-start your brain. We often suggest taking an energy bar or some peanuts, something with protein and carbohydrates. Scarfing down a candy bar is actually counterproductive; your sugar levels rise only momentarily and then drop down below where they were before you had your chocolate fix.
Watch: Keeping track of time on your own timepiece is more efficient than wasting precious seconds seeking out the clock on the testing site wall. Place your watch on the desk where you can refer to it easily throughout the exam. Digital watches may not be allowed. Stick with ones that have faces and hands. Your watch can’t make any sounds either. If the proctor hears so much as a beep from your watch, she will not-so-politely request that you leave the building and cancel your test.
Calculator: The ACT gurus allow you to use a calculator only on the Mathematics Test. Although the ACT information bulletin has an entire quarter page detailing which calculators you can and cannot use, for all practical purposes, you can use any calculator (yes, even a graphing calculator) as long as it doesn’t make a noise or have a computer algebra system. Make sure the one you bring has at least a square root function and, ideally, basic trigonometry functions. You may not use a laptop computer (don’t laugh; you’d be surprised by how many students want to bring one to the test!) or a pocket organizer.
What Not to Take to the ACT
Do not, we repeat do not, take the following items with you to the ACT test room:
Cellphones and other electronic devices: Leave your cellphone in the car. You aren’t allowed to bring it into the test room. One student we know was dismissed from the test because he accidentally left his cellphone in his pocket, and it rang during the exam. The same goes for other electronics, such as iPads, PC tablets, or anything else that can access the Internet.
Books and notes: Take it from us: Last-minute studying doesn’t do much good. So leave all your books at home; you aren’t allowed to take them into the test room with you. (Just be sure to fill your parents in on this rule. We once had a student whose mother drove all the way to the test center with her daughter’s ACT prep book, thinking the girl needed it for the test. The mom actually pulled the girl out of the test to give her the book, resulting in the girl’s nearly being disqualified from the test.)
Scratch paper: You may not bring your own scratch paper to the test, and you don’t receive any scratch paper during the exam. Fortunately, the exam booklet has plenty of blank space on which you can do your calculations.
What to Do If You Have Special Circumstances
Not everyone takes the ACT under the same conditions. You may have a special circumstance that can allow you to change the date of the ACT or the way you take your exam. Here are a few of the special circumstances that may affect how you take the ACT:
Learning disabilities: If you have a diagnosed learning disability (LD), you may be able to get special accommodations, such as more time to take the test. However, you must specifically request such accommodations way in advance. Prepare your requests for fall tests by the prior June and for spring tests by the prior September. Please note that in order to be eligible for special testing on the ACT, your LD must have been diagnosed by a professional and you should have a current individualized education plan at school that includes extended test time. Talk to your counselor for more information.
Physical disabilities: If you have a physical disability, you may be able to take a test in a special format — in Braille, large print, or on audio. Go to the official ACT website (www.actstudent.org) for complete information about special testing.
Religious obligations: If your religion prohibits you from taking a test on a Saturday, you may test on an alternate date. The ACT registration website specifies dates and locations in each state.
Military duty: If you’re an active military person, you don’t complete the normal ACT registration form. Instead, ask your Educational Services Officer about testing through DANTES (Defense Activity for Nontraditional Educational Support).
Guessing for Points to Maximize Your Score
Scoring on the ACT is very straightforward:
You get one point for every answer you get right.
You get zero points for every answer you omit.
You get zero points for every answer you get wrong.
The ACT is absolutely wonderful in that it doesn’t penalize you for wrong answers. (In contrast, the SAT subtracts a fraction of a point for every question you miss.) Therefore, guessing on the ACT obviously works to your advantage. Never leave any question blank. We suggest that you save a couple of minutes at the end of each section just to go through the test and make sure that you’ve filled in an answer for every single question.
Your Number’s Up: Scoring on the ACT
We once had a frustrated student tell us that the scores on the ACT looked a lot like measurements to him: 34, 29, 36. However, the ACT has four scores, which makes for a very strange set of measurements! The ACT scores are nothing like high school scores based on percentages. They’re not even like the familiar SAT scores that range from 200 to 800. Instead, they range from 1 to 36. Scoring on the ACT works like this:
Each required test (English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science) receives a scale score between 1 (low) and 36 (high).
The composite score is the average of the four required test scale scores.
The English, Mathematics, and Reading Tests each receive a subscore between 1 and 18.
Don’t assume that the subscores determine the total score. That would be too easy and too logical. The subscores are determined independently and don’t necessarily add up to the total score in a section. Subscores show your performance on specific groups of questions within each of the tests that have subscores. For example, if you get Reading subscores of 11 in Social Sciences/Science and 16 in Arts/Literature, you know that you did better on the prose fiction and humanities passages than you did on the social science and science passages. Most colleges don’t pay much attention to subscores when they make admissions decisions.
If you take the ACT Plus Writing (which is the official title for the ACT with the optional Writing Test), you receive a Writing subscore that ranges from 2 (low) to 12 (high). The subscore is the sum of the scores you receive from each of the two people who grade your essay. You also get an additional Combined English/Writing score that ranges from 1 to 36. The ACT weighs this score based on two-thirds English and one-third Writing. Neither the Writing Test score nor the Combined English/Writing score gets averaged into your composite ACT score.
A percentile score tells you where you rank in your state and nationwide.
Look at the percentiles. Just knowing that you got a 26 doesn’t tell you much. You need to know whether a 26 is in the 50th percentile, the 75th percentile, or the 99th percentile. If you get a 36, you have documented lifetime bragging rights because that’s a perfect score!
You may see additional readiness indicators. A STEM Score represents overall performance on the math and science sections. An English Language Arts Score combines your performance on the English, reading, and writing tests. The Progress Toward Career Readiness Indicator measures your progress toward career readiness for a variety of careers. The Text Complexity Progress Indicator tells you whether you're sufficiently understanding text material for college and career level reading.
The ACT website actstudent.org provides a sample score report and scoring information that shows you what all these scores look like when you and your colleges of choice receive them.
What the ACT Expects You to Know
The ACT tests the following subjects:
English: The ACT expects you to know the fundamentals of grammar, usage, punctuation, diction, and rhetorical skills. For example, you must understand sentence construction — what makes a run-on and what makes a fragment. You need to know how to distinguish between commonly confused words, like affect and effect or principal and principle. You must be able to use the proper forms of words, distinguishing between an adjective and an adverb, and you must know the difference between a comma and a semicolon.
Mathematics: The ACT requires basic skills in arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. If you’ve had two semesters of algebra, two semesters of geometry, and a general math background, you have the math you need to answer about 90 percent of the questions. Unfortunately, the ACT also tests trigonometry. If you haven’t had trigonometry, don’t worry. The test has only a few trig questions (usually just four), and usually half of them are easily answered when you know SOHCAHTOA. Oh, and you don’t have to know calculus. The ACT has no calculus questions. Happy day!
Reading: The ACT expects you to be able to read a passage in a relatively short amount of time and answer questions based on it. Your reading skills are probably pretty set by now. If you’re 17, you’re not going to change the way you’ve been reading for the past 12 years. However, this fact doesn’t mean you can’t improve your ACT Reading score. Chapter 13 shows you a few tricks you can use to improve your speed and tells you how to recognize and avoid traps built into the questions.
Science: You don’t have to have any specific science background to ace the Science Test. The passages may test chemistry, biology, botany, physics, or any other science, but you don’t have to have had those courses. The test gives you all the information you need to answer the science questions in the passages, diagrams, charts, and tables.
Writing (optional): The ACT folks added this optional section to test your writing ability (an extremely important component for college success). Don’t worry! You’ve been writing for years, and the ACT people know that you can’t possibly write a perfect essay in a measly 30 minutes. They’re not focusing on perfection; instead, they’re looking at your thesis, your organization, and your ability to support your thoughts. The ACT doesn’t require you to write the essay, but we suggest that you do. Quite a few colleges require the essay, and taking the ACT Plus Writing will ensure that you meet their requirements.
Repeating the Test for a Better Score
Are you allowed to repeat the ACT? Yes. Should you repeat the ACT? Probably. Decide whether to repeat the ACT based on your answers to the following questions:
What errors did I make the first time around? If your mistakes were from a lack of knowledge, that is, you just plain didn’t know a grammar rule or a math formula, you can easily correct those mistakes with studying. However, if you made mistakes because you daydreamed during the exam, you may have a personality quirk that’s not as easy to change.
Why do I want to repeat the test? Is your ego destroyed because your best friend got a better score than you did? That’s probably not a good enough reason to retake the ACT. Do retake the exam if you’re trying to get a minimum qualifying score to enable you to get into a college or earn a scholarship.
Can I go through this all over again? How seriously did you take studying the first time around? If you gave it all you had, you may be too burned out to go through the whole process again. On the other hand, if you just zoomed through the test booklet and didn’t spend much time preparing for the test, you may want a second chance to show your stuff.
Were my mistakes caused by factors that were not my fault? Maybe you were in a fender-bender on your way to the exam, or perhaps you stayed up late the night before in an argument with your parents or your boyfriend or girlfriend. If you just weren’t up to par when you took the exam, definitely take it again, and this time be sure to get a good night’s sleep the night before.
The ACT doesn’t automatically send colleges the scores for every time you take the test. It gives you the option of deciding which set of scores you want colleges to see. If you don’t want to report the results of all your tests, keep these issues in mind:
The ACT automatically sends scores to the colleges you list on your test registration form. If you want to wait until after you see your report to decide whether certain colleges can see your scores for a particular test administration, don’t list those colleges with your ACT registration.
Many colleges figure your ACT composite score by averaging the highest scores you get in each section across all administrations of the test. They refer to this practice as superscoring the ACT. If you get a 24 in English, a 21 in Math, a 23 in Reading, and a 25 in Science the first time you take the ACT and a 25, 20, 24, and 24, respectively, the second time, these colleges will figure your composite score by averaging your higher 25 English score, 21 Math score, 24 Reading score, and 25 Science score. Your composite score for each administration would be 23, but the composite score the colleges calculate would be 24. Therefore, you may want the colleges to get reports from all the times you take the ACT so that they can superscore your highest section scores.
Some colleges require you to report your scores from every test date. Check with the admissions committee at the colleges to which you’re applying to make sure they allow you to withhold score reports from particular test dates.
Figuring out what — and what not — to take to the ACT
The ACT is absolutely wonderful in that it doesn’t penalize you for wrong answers. (In contrast, the SAT subtracts a fraction of a point for every question you miss.) Therefore, guessing on the ACT obviously works to your advantage. Never leave any question blank. We suggest that you save a couple of minutes at the end of each section just to go through the test and make sure that you’ve filled in an answer for every single question.