Review - Cracking the ACT with 6 practice tests, 2018 edition: the techniques, practice, and review you need to score higher

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So youre taking the ACT. What will you need to do first? This chapter presents an overview of the ACT as a whole and discusses registration requirements, when to take the test, how to have your scores reported to colleges (or how not to), and the ways in which colleges use your scores.

The ACT is a standardized test used for college admissions. But you probably already knew that. In this book, well tell you all the things you didnt know about the ACT, all to show you how to crack the test and get your best score.

The ACT is traditionally a pencil-and-paper exam but is now given online as well. While the test is usually taken on Saturday mornings, some states offer a special state-administration during the school day. Non-Saturday testing is available but only for students who live in remote areas or who cant test on Saturdays for religious reasons.

The ACT is written by a nonprofit organization that used to call itself American College Testing but now just calls itself ACT. The company has been producing the ACT since it introduced the test in 1959 as an alternative to the College Boards SAT. ACT also writes ACT Aspire and PreACT, which are tests you may have taken earlier in your academic career. The organization also provides a broad range of services to educational agencies and business institutions.

The nice people who write the ACTwell refer to them as ACT from now ondescribe it as an assessment of college readiness, a curriculum- and standards-based educational and career planning tool that assesses students academic readiness for college.

We at The Princeton Review have always been skeptical when any standardized test makes broad claims of what it can measure. In our opinion, a standardized test is just a measure of how well you take that test. Granted, ACT has spent an extraordinary amount of time analyzing data and providing the results of their research to various educational institutions and agencies. In fact, ACT has contributed to the development of the Common Core Standards Initiative, an educational reform that aligns diverse state curricula into national uniform standards.