The ACT

English

For most students, this section is the most improvable.  If you got an 18, you should be getting well into the 20s.  If you scored in the 20s, you should have cracked 30.  And if you got a 32, that's nice, but you have it within you to get a perfect score.​  It's on the English section where students most often think "Why did I choose D?!  I never would have written that or said that.  When this happens, most students tell themselves "Be more careful!" . . . and then make a similar error a few questions later.  There is an art to "being careful" and we'll make sure that you master that art.​

But yes, you've got to know the difference between a full colon and a semicolon.  Luckily, the ACT tests the same small set of rules on every test.  We'll make sure that you know these rules COLD and don't waste a precious moment studying the many rules of English that never show up on the test.

Math

Like the English section, the Math part of the ACT tests your ability to avoid careless errors.  But it also tests a much larger set of rules.  For this reason, our sessions typically emphasize math.  We'll customize our time together to meet your needs, but many students benefit from a focus on the math material found from questions 35 to 55.  If your current math ability is about average, mastering these questions will do the most to boost your score.

Reading

Good news — it's an open book test.  Nothing will be asked that can't be answered by looking at the passage.  ​Not-so-good news — you've got only 35 minutes to go through 4  passages that you might not find so interesting and answer 40 questions.  ​Excellent news — we can teach you the crucial time-management skills that will allow you to sidestep reading the whole passage (we call our approach skreading) so that you focus on exactly those parts that will allow you to answer the questions most efficiently.  Notice we said "efficiently," not "quickly." Racing through the material leads to carelessness.  

Science

When we help students analyze Science passages and answer the questions, the usual reaction is, "Oh, it's  not really that bad."  What looked like a complex set of graphs about some obscure topic is actually a very ordered way of representing fairly straight-ahead data. The trick is to realize "it's not that bad" when you're first looking at the material.  Simple?  Sometimes.  Learnable?  Absolutely. We'll guide you through all the ways that data can be graphically displayed so that on the day of the test, you'll look at the material and say to yourself, "Oh yeah, I know how to do this one." 

Writing (Essay)

Should you even take this optional section?  Let's talk about it.  It's one more place where you can make a good impression — or not.  If you do decide to take this section, we'll make sure that you know how to write the kind of essay that get high scores.