ACT Prep

I first got started with the ACT a few years ago, when the younger brother of a former SAT phone-tutoring client asked for my help with it. I told him I didn’t know anything about the ACT (because, at the time, I didn’t). He asked me to look at it anyhow, and let him know what I thought.

By this time I was pretty established as a tutor for the SAT, LSAT, GRE, and GMAT, and I figured I wouldn’t have too much trouble applying my standardized testing techniques to the ACT, as well. So I told my client’s brother I’d be happy to help him out.

Actually, the ACT turned out to be even less complicated than I expected. Despite popular claims that the ACT is somehow more in tune with what students learn in school on a daily basis, it turns out that the ACT is almost exactly the same as the SAT. I mean, they’re not identical twins, but they’re at least in the same immediate family. Almost everything that works on the ACT will work on the SAT, and vice versa.

There are definitely some differences between the tests (different answer choice patterns in some places, slightly different grammatical rules, the ACT occasionally mentions trig, and so on), but there are far more similarities than differences. And the most important thing about the ACT is that, just like the SAT and every other standardized multiple-choice test in America, the ACT can be gamed.

In other words, there’s a way to approach the ACT that focuses much more on the design of the test than it does on learning science, grammar, and math, which is what most people do when they get ready for the test.

I teach my students how to attack the ACT in terms of the test’s structure, and this approach allows them to leverage what they already know into much higher scores than they might have thought possible otherwise.

I’d like to give you a rough idea of how I do that. If you’re interested, please put your name and email address in the box at the top of this page, and I’ll show you a video that you might find interesting.