ACT Practice Tests: Get the Most Benefit Without Paying a Dime

For high school students wishing to get a good score on the ACT, practice tests are both an invaluable and misunderstood tool. The first thing to know is that you should never pay for a practice test, as you can get them for free very easily from a high school guidance counselor or at http://www.actstudent.org/. The second thing to know is how to use a practice test to improve your score; simply taking a lot of practice tests won't help you much unless you are using them to diagnose your shortcomings.


Many expensive ACT prep courses use the lure of a diagnostic ACT practice test to generate income from parents with deep pockets, and even have the nerve to charge a couple hundred dollars to administer the test and interpret the results. Since you can get the tests for free, the only thing you need to do is interpret the results. That is very straightforward.


While many free tests abound, the test that is the most helpful will break your score down into subscores for Math, English and Reading. The tests you get from ACT will have this breakdown.
The Math test has 60 questions, basically divided into elementary, intermediate and advanced math, loosely corresponding to freshman, sophomore and junior year math classes. Since the free practice tests provided by the ACT organization break the results down for you into these three categories, you can very easily determine what you need to study to increase your score.


Many students are surprised to find that they did better on the more advanced math and poorly on the elementary math. This is because they haven’t seen the freshman math problems in two or three years, and just requires some brushing up. As far as Trigonometry goes, the ACT has only 4 questions on this, so if you haven’t yet taken Trig, don’t worry too much.


The English test score is also broken down into two categories: rhetoric and usage/mechanics. Rhetoric is basically your abilities at writing and identifying good writing, which is difficult to improve quickly. The usage/mechanics portion tests grammar and punctuation and since these skills can be improved much more quickly, this is where you should focus your efforts.


The subscores provided for the Reading test are really of little value and the Science test has no subscores. However, by taking the time to see if you missed questions of a certain type on each test, you can identify areas where you can improve your score. For instance, did you miss Reading questions that asked you to identify persons, places or things in the passage? If so, then underlining these items when you read each passage will help you improve.


While each of the four tests on the ACT seem to be quite different, there are methods to approaching questions that students can learn that will apply to all four, saving time and quickly raising their score.


More information about the ACT and test taking tips are available at http://www.collegeexamtutor.com/ where you will find a newsletter and also a four hour video course available either online or on DVDs.