How to Best Prepare for ACT Science
When you ask students about the ACT, most will make a comment about the difficulty of the Science section. Our Simple ACT program, actonlinetutoring.com, offers a great way to learn HOW To take this daunting section of the test. Here we will give several key tips to remember as you prepare for the ACT Science section.
1. You must practice some ACT Science problems before you take the test.
Even if you are a great science student in school, you will need to learn the best way to approach this portion of the test. You must learn how to go at the speed of light. We suggest using official ACT practice problems if possible. On actonlinetutoring.com you will find several real ACT practice test problems, with all the answers. In fact, for a recent test, one of our best ACT Science tutors explains every single problem and goes through the best way to get the right answers.
2. Get the timing right for the ACT Science section. You will see 7 passages, 35 minutes, 40 questions- and this works out to be about 52.5 seconds per question, or 5 minutes per passage. The section moves so, so fast that if you don’t know how to approach the questions, you will run out of time.
3. Learn how to best approach the 3 types of passages. We detail our strategies through our Simple ACT program, actonlinetutoring.com :
*easiest types (typically 3 passages) Charts and Graphs (we suggest reading the introduction, then going right to the questions.
* medium difficulty (typically 1 passage) Reading War of the Scientists (we suggest reading each viewpoint, then answering all questions related to that viewpoint before moving to the next viewpoint) We review our ACT Reading strategy for this section of the test. Our ACT Reading videos fully explain how to best attack the passages containing more than one viewpoint.
*most difficult (usually 3 passages) Experiments (we suggest reading the introduction, then marking the questions with the experiments mentioned in the questions) We detail how to approach these in our ACT Science videos.
4. Always review your mistakes and try to identify how to get this type of problem correct when you see it again. More than almost any other section of the test, the ACT Science section requires a careful review of errors so that you may learn HOW to do these types of questions.
Most students miss ACT Science questions for the following reasons:
Not reading the introduction carefully, not viewing the charts and graphs carefully, not reading the questions carefully, not using the answer choices for clues
5. Review the ACTUAL science that you may really need on the ACT Science test. We include a very strong ACT Science glossary as part of our SimpleACT method at actonlinetutoring.com You must know some basic scientific information such as atomic structure, cell structure, basic genetics, PH, photosynthesis, freezing and boiling point of water, distance formula and more. We answer every student email about the test through our website, actonlinetutoring.com
6. Practice, practice, practice. The more you do, the more you write down your errors and learn from them, the higher your ACT Science score will go.
