How I Got a 34 on the ACT

As a high school senior preparing for the college application season, I naturally had to take a standardized test to send off to schools. Why did I choose the ACT over the SAT, some might ask? Well, I suppose it was a very common choice at my school and in the South.

My Basic Tips
I took my first ACT in July of 2020, going in blind and without preparation. This was my intent, to gauge my existing skills. The experience was similar to any exam, especially the PSAT which I had taken two times before this test. After finishing my test and waiting several weeks for my score, I received a 26! At the time, I was a little disappointed, not because the score was bad, but because I knew I could do better. A 26 on the ACT is a good score that would allow me to get into many colleges, but it was my intent to get an idea of where I was in order to improve on the test. This first experience taught me a lot.

• Go through sections as quick as you can and do not linger on any difficult questions.
• Skip over hard questions and come back if you have time.
• Never leave any spaces empty because they do not take off points for wrong answers. It is to your benefit to bubble in every question even if it is a guess.
• I would recommend when they call 5 minutes to bubble in “B” or “C” for all the remaining questions and go back to the ones that you have the greatest chance of finishing correctly.
• Another tip is to prepare yourself mentally the day before the test. Set the proper alarms so that you can eat a small breakfast prior to a 4-hour long test. Prepare your outfit and testing materials.
• Do not cram the day before the exam! It will only wear you out and cause stress.
• Lastly, leave all electronics at home or in the car. You will have to remove them anyway and I would not risk your test being disqualified.

These seem like basic tips that do not really contribute to my score, but from my experience in taking the test 6 times, I have learned a thing or two.

My Strategy

You may wonder how my score jumped up so drastically; well, that’s not exactly the case. My tests went up gradually from 26 to 2 “28's” to 2 “30's” to a 34. I had a difficult experience, actually studying for the test. I would procrastinate until the week of the exam or a few days prior. However, somehow kept improving. As a low-income student-athlete involved with many extracurricular activities, it was impossible for me to hire a tutor or join a paid class. This meant that I had to take advantage of affordable or free resources available to me. I learned of a website called “Prep factory” which was a free resource available to students. In my spare time during class or sometimes at home, I would grind out lessons to hone basic skills. Through my ACT fee waiver, I was offered a 6-month membership to ACT Online Prep, which I similarly spent a lot of time finishing lessons. I would not say that these are the sole reasons my test score improved, but I can highly recommend them for students in similar situations. One day, I had a realization that many of the students with the best scores just take practice tests over and over again, so I decided that would be my strategy. You can find many free practice tests that you can print from online, but the more affordable way is to buy practice test booklets that have multiple tests. I recommend that you get ones that include explanations (My book was from Kaplan). The best strategy for improving your score, from my experience, is to take practice tests in a similar environment to your test center (in a silent room without the distraction of your phone, for example) and time your test as it would be given if it were a proper ACT exam. After finishing your test or sections, look over every missed question, and understand why you got it wrong, and prepare yourself to not miss that type of question again. Do this over and over again, taking a full practice exam bi-weekly or as much as you can up until your test date. You will certainly improve.

Overlapping Curriculum

What I can emphasize most about improving your score is to be fully engaged with your work in school. I believe that my time as a student in AP Literature, Honors Pre-calculus, and now AP Calculus has helped to improve my scores in Math, English, and Reading which are my highest scores. You would be surprised by the amount of material that correlates between your classes and the ACT. For example, last year I re-learned the equation of the circle, and this year I learned about matrices.

Final Thoughts

I wish you the best on your journey with the ACT. It is a rough one, but if you dedicate proper time to improving and follow my recommendations, I believe that you will see some improvement.