February 23, 201610 yr Daughter is a Freshman and preparing to take the ACT for the second time. Anyone have any suggestions on Guides or Prep I should consider for her? She is a Straight A student and is currently taking Prep Classes in Math and Science. I am looking for something that will give her the most bang for her time invested. This of course isn't a make or break test since she will have many more opportunities, but I would like to help her be as prepared as possible. There are so many available I just didn't want to waste her time or my money on something that wouldn't help her. Any help or suggestions will be appreciated.
February 23, 201610 yr In Northern Kentucky, Julie Rash @ Beechwood has helped many with great success.
February 23, 201610 yr Author In Northern Kentucky, Julie Rash @ Beechwood has helped many with great success. Thanks...I'm looking for more of a study guide. Beechwood would be quite a drive for me :lol2:
February 23, 201610 yr Thanks...I'm looking for more of a study guide. Beechwood would be quite a drive for me :lol2: You make the drive and LaRosa's on me. :thumb:
February 23, 201610 yr Author khan academy? It is free. https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep Thanks...I didn't even think of Khan Accademy
February 23, 201610 yr JD, the key is familiarity with the questions and how they are written and what is asked. Of course knowledge of content is important, but it is a crap shoot. My experience has been the best thing to do is just practice, practice, practice the online Practice tests. There are individuals that can help with prep, but nothing replaces the practice. In general a student gets better the first three times they take the test. Usually, that is their limit. I would prepare her to take it three times. Good luck!
February 23, 201610 yr Author JD, the key is familiarity with the questions and how they are written and what is asked. Of course knowledge of content is important, but it is a crap shoot. My experience has been the best thing to do is just practice, practice, practice the online Practice tests. There are individuals that can help with prep, but nothing replaces the practice. In general a student gets better the first three times they take the test. Usually, that is their limit. I would prepare her to take it three times. Good luck! Thanks, as a middle school student a year and a half ago, she made a 27 the first time out. She's really wanting to get into the 30 or better range this time out.
February 23, 201610 yr Thanks, as a middle school student a year and a half ago, she made a 27 the first time out. She's really wanting to get into the 30 or better range this time out. That's outstanding for anyone, much less a middle schooler. She should be able to improve that much with practice and two more years of content.
February 23, 201610 yr It scares me when I think how many years have passed since I took the ACT, but I had a fairly respectable score. About 5 years ago I did a little part time tutoring for a test prep company. I can't give you any specific recommendations but I can offer a little bit of advice to pass along to your daughter. When you approach the 30+ range, a question or two each section can be worth a point in either direction. Since she already has a great grasp on the majority of the test, the best advice I would give is to look at the subject matter for each question she got wrong and go over any practice tests she has completed. Be honest with herself whether or not she guessed, and figure out why she chose the wrong answers and why the correct answers make the most sense. Time is probably one of the biggest issues for maximizing a score. Since she's shooting for a 30+, she's going to want to know how to do all of the problems rather than just guessing on the difficult ones in order to save time for the easier ones. It's therefore even more important to become comfortable with the areas she has previously struggled. At the end of the day, your daughter already has a strong score. She probably doesn't want to hear it, but even if she doesn't improve this time she will learn quite a bit from now until her junior year. She'll have more geometry and precal, more experience with scientific studies and graphs and will be more comfortable reading dense passages of literature. When I took the test in high school I scored worse my second time, then increased 3 points from my original score the third and final time.
February 23, 201610 yr Author From everything I've read Bipsic it looks like what you and others have said is the key...practice, practice, practice. I think we'll set aside some time each week just for this...she has a pretty full schedule but I think we can work in some quality practice and review time. She said that just what she has picked up in Geometry this year and what little they have touched on Trigonometry will help her a lot, as she had not studied any of that in school last time out when she took the test. Same with some of the science test questions that were on material that just hadn't yet been covered going into 8th grade.
February 24, 201610 yr I think every kid probably has a maximum score they can realistically attain, but at the same time the idea of a standardized test is to be able to say that a 30 on one test is the same as a 30 on one from a different date. Knowing that, there are only so many ways to ask similar questions about the same concepts. If your daughter is going to set aside time, I would highly recommend spending more time going over practice problems than actually practicing. I would argue that it would be more beneficial to take one or two practice tests and thoroughly go over the questions and answers than to take five or six and just check the answers and browse what you got wrong.
February 24, 201610 yr I used a test prep guide from a company called "princeton review". I found it to be very useful.
February 24, 201610 yr I would agree with the advice to take several practice exams, looking for trends in weak areas, then dive in and study. That's how I passed the CPA exam. Practice tests over and over. When I got to the real tests about 20% of the questions were exact duplicates of what I'd practiced. It was a great relief to see so many problems I could answer quickly.
February 24, 201610 yr For the portions that involve reading a passage, and then answering a question(s) about the passage, I found the princeton review to be very helpful. They would identify the types of questions and give each type a "name." Then they would show how if you knew the type of question, you could get a good idea of which answer would be correct and/or how to find the answer in the passage quickly.
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.