​Last-Minute ACT Advice for the October 22, 2016 ACT

If you haven’t already, take a practice ACT under timed conditions. You want to practice pacing yourself and skipping questions you don’t know how to solve quickly (guessing at them when you have about 1 minute left). Remember, unlike the SAT, the ACT does NOT organize the math questions in order of difficulty.  Also unlike the SAT, the ACT does NOT give you basic math formulas (such as the formulas for the area of a circle, rectangle, triangle or square), so you’ll have to know them. The ACT does, however, give you more complex formulas right in the problem when and where you need to know them.

You also want to do a practice essay under timed conditions – you do NOT want your first attempt at writing the ACT essay to be an actual scored ACT essay. Basically, you must analyze all three perspectives on the issue, giving examples to support your analysis, and then present your own perspective, also supporting that perspective with evidence. Just one or two good examples from the news, history, fiction, or your personal experience, for each perspective will do.

Make sure you have a calculator that is approved for use on the ACT. Here’s the link to the official ACT calculator policy, including a list of approved and disapproved calculators. https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act/taking-the-test/calculator-policy.html

​If yours is listed as not approved (the ACT says use of the TI-89 “is the most common reason students are dismissed from the ACT test for prohibited calculator use.”), GO GET AN APPROVED CALCULATOR. You want to use a calculator for your calculations on the test – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the hard parts of ACT and SAT problems correctly, only to make a calculation error at the end. Luckily, my errors are often weird enough that my answers aren’t listed as wrong answers, but you may not be so lucky.

Make sure you have extra batteries for the calculator. Make sure you have four or five sharpened #2 pencils. You don’t want to have to sharpen pencils during the test or beg someone for batteries (you may have to leave the batteries with an exam proctor and ask for permission to change them – even if you don’t, you should probably let a proctor know what you’re doing before you start reaching for your spare batteries).
Make sure you have a watch, cheap digital timer, or something else that (1) tells the time or works as a timer/stopwatch; (2) can’t be used to communicate with any other person or device; and (3) is set to operate silently (turn off any audible alarm). You don’t want to be dismissed for making noise or using a communications device.

If you’re not taking the test at the school you attend, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW HOW TO GET THERE. Go there before test day to see how to get there and how long it takes. Map out the route on transit or on foot, in case you don’t have access to a car (e.g., the car you planned to take breaks down). BRING YOUR IDENTIFICATION. While you can probably get away with having no I.D. at your high school, where the teachers and other staff know you, you’re not going to get into the test if staff at some other school or test site don’t know you and you don’t have any ID. Bring your ACT admission ticket (printed out).  You won’t get into any ACT or SAT without your ticket.

For further ACT test advice, see my earlier blog entries. Good luck!