Kaplan Test Prep - ACT Prep 2021: 3 Practice Tests + Proven Strategies + Online

Lead Editor
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Contributing Editors
Dr. Brandon Deason, M.D.; M. Dominic Eggert; Alexandra Strelka, MA; Glen Stohr

Special thanks to our writers and reviewers:
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Additional special thanks to
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Congratulations on taking this important step in your college admissions process! By studying with Kaplan, the official partner of live instruction for the ACT, youll maximize your score on the ACT, a major factor in your overall application.

Our experience shows that the greatest ACT score increases result from active engagement in the preparation process. Kaplan will give you direction, focus your preparation, and teach you the specific skills and effective test-taking strategies you need to know for the ACT. We will help you achieve your top performance on test day, but your effort is crucial. The more you invest in preparing for the ACT, the greater your chances of achieving your target score and getting into your top-choice college.

Are you registered for the ACT? Kaplan cannot register you for the official ACT. If you have not already registered for the upcoming ACT, visit the official website at www.act.org to register online and for information on registration deadlines, test sites, accommodations, and fees.

The chapters in this book follow a standard format to make this book as easy to use as possible.

At the beginning of most chapters, you have an opportunity to assess how much you already know about the topics by answering a set of test-like questions. If you answer most or all of the questions in a set correctly and in the most efficient way, you may want to skip one or more lessons in that chapter. If you answer some or all of the questions in a set incorrectly or in an inefficient way, you will want to review most or all of the lessons in that chapter. The answers and explanations for these sections are provided immediately after the question set.

The lessons within each chapter start with a question (or passage) typical of the way the ACT tests a given topic and ends with a set of practice questions called Try on Your Own. These sections are designed to provide immediate, targeted practice. Complete these questions and review their explanations at least once after reviewing the lesson. You might consider completing these questions multiple times if you are preparing for the ACT over an extended period of time. The answers and explanations for these sections are provided at the end of each chapter.

You need to reinforce what you learn in each chapter by practicing the Kaplan methods and strategies. Most chapters include a section called How Much Have You Learned? that features additional practice questions reinforcing the concepts explained in that chapter. The answers and explanations for these sections are provided at the end of each chapter.

Most of the Math chapters include an On Test Day section that highlights one or more ways a question can be approached strategically. Complete these sections after you have reviewed the lessons but before you complete the How Much Have You Learned? question set.

These sections can be completed during or after a chapters completion. You might prefer to use the Reflect sections to evaluate your retention over time or reflect on the chapter as a whole when you complete all of the lessons. However you choose to reflect on your ACT studying, whats important is taking the time to do so.

Different topics are worth different numbers of points on the ACT because they show up more or less frequently in questions. By studying the information released by the test maker, Kaplan has been able to determine how often certain topics are likely to appear on the ACT, and therefore, predict how many points these topics are worth on test day. This means that if you master a given topic and answer all of the questions from that category correctly on test day, then you can expect to earn approximately that number of SmartPoints out of the overall 36 points total for that test.

The breakdown of SmartPoints for English, Math, Reading, and Science are summarized in the following tables. You can also see how these topics align to chapters in this book.