ACT Math - Why Students Struggle

The Three Sections


The math portion of the ACT is divided into three parts, basically corresponding to freshman, sophomore and junior math. Interestingly enough, the freshman math is where many students do poorly, as this math is two years old for them and not 'fresh' in their minds! The good news is that a quick brush up is generally all that is needed to bring up this part of their math score.


There are 60 questions on the math test, and they are divided as follows:

• Pre-Algebra / Algebra - 24 questions (basically freshman math)


• Intermediate Algebra / Coordinate Geometry - 18 questions (basically sophomore math)


• Plane Geometry - 14 questions / Trigonometry - 4 questions (basically junior math)

Where Many Students Go Wrong


The biggest fear that most students have is that they will not know how to do the problems on the test. With the math test, the culprit is trigonometry. However, worrying about 4 questions out of 60 does not make sense. Instead, students should focus on the area that has the largest number of questions, which is algebra ! Once they are very confident in that area, geometry is the next priority.


The Best Strategy


In the algebra area, the most mistakes are generally made with figuring out how to set up the equations for the word problems. So this is the best opportunity for studying that will give the greatest return on your score!



Do as many practice tests as you can, focusing on algebra equations and you will see your score rise quickly. Most mistakes made on this, the biggest portion of the math test, are made in determining from the word problem what the formula should be! That's right, the majority of the time that students are punching numbers into their calculator, they are on the wrong path. The reason that they don't realize it is that the multiple choice answers always provide options for the most common errors. Students complete the problem, see their answer as one of the five options and move on to the next problem never realizing that they got the question wrong!

The Main Thing

No matter what portion of the test you are working on, just as in life, you want to focus on the most important, high value things first. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing! And in the math test, it is algebra!