Elizabeth King - Acing the ACT: An Elite Tutors Guide to Tricky Questions and Secret Strategies that Make a Big Difference

Copyright 2015 by Elizabeth King

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

King, Elizabeth.
Acing the ACT : an elite tutors guide to trick(y) questions and secret little strategies that make a big difference / Elizabeth King.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. ACT AssessmentStudy guides. I. Title.
LB2353.48.K55 2015
378.1662dc23
2014036554

eBook ISBN: 978-1-60774-640-9
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60774-639-3

Author photo copyright Lynn Parks

Trade Paperback Design by Margaux Keres

v3.1

It always feels scary to tell secrets, you know?

especially when your secrets give you the advantage.

After all, each year my team and I are the secret weapons of students from all over the world who want to attend the very best colleges and universities in the United States. We make ACT scores soar to such a degree that we all feel a little bit guilty about it. In fact, we offer such an edge that most of our students wont even tell their classmates theyre working with us.

The observations and insights in Acing the ACT are my private, personal notes on the ACT. These notes are my own secret weapons. Theyre not the basics; theyre what set my team and me apart.

So here I am, a little nervous to let the cat out of the bag.

I realized decades ago that Im someone whos naturally great at taking standardized tests; all I needed to do was figure out how to explain my approach and methods so anyone could use them and improve. I eventually became great at that, too; Ive since spent well over a decade teaching students from New York to Athens, Beverly Hills to Miami, and Venezuela to Kuwait how to approach tests as I do.

All that teaching has given me a lot of time to observe.

Ive observed what my students actually knowand what they really dont know. Ive observed how they think and what theyre afraid of.

Ive observed how the test makers make the complex deceivingly simple and the simple deceivingly complexwhat I call the tricky questions, the ones that students anguish over and often get wrong.

Most important, Ive figured out how to get my students over those hurdles so they can create incredible score gains for themselves and get into their dream schools.

Even the trickiest questions on the ACT can be anticipated, as the test makers rely on similar question types year after year to stump students. Were focusing specifically on those types of questions in Acing the ACT . Again, this is all about secrets, tricks, weird questions, and a look at the meaner strategies of the ACT test makers.

Keep in mind that the ACT covers an enormous amount of material and there is simply no way we could include everything here, but dont worry! Weve put together a package of free resources at AcingTheACTBook.com where youll find not only all of the free, real ACT practice tests from the last ten years, but also a list of questions from those tests that correspond directly with the secrets in Acing the ACT . This book will be useful without these materials, but Id strongly recommend you read this book with the guide to questions within reach to reinforce the strategies youll learn here.

Good luckand lets get started!

T HE PURPOSE OF EACH SUBSECTION OF THE ACT ISN T CLEAR TO MOST TEST TAKERS .

The ACT includes four test sections: English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science, plus an optional Writing section (an essay that, incidentally, many colleges require). It could be argued that the purpose of every section is different than the purpose of the othersand this goes far beyond topic.

The English and the Math sections largely test what you know. You might even say that 75 percent of these sections are testing facts and skills: grammar rules, math formulas, rules of writing mechanics, translating English into algebra, and so on. The other 25 percent may be questions about how and why we use these rules.

Meanwhile, the Reading and Science sections are an inversion of that: Theyre all about application. They investigate how students think and process information, and include far fewer questions about information students might know ahead of time. In fact, it is incredibly rare for these sections to ask students to know a fact like a definition or a specific scientific term that would have been learned in school.

This means that the best way to see scores increase quickly is to focus on three things.

First , learn the facts and skills tested in the English and Math sections.

Second , understand strategy and how the Reading and Science sections apply reasoning in standardized ways.

Third (and this is what brings home those top scores), students should develop connoisseurship of ACT-style tricky questions. We have fit as many of these insights as we could into Acing the ACT and have developed codes for their styles so you can understand them even more easily; youll find out more in the section about note-taking below.

S TUDENTS ARE SUPERSTITIOUS AND FOLLOW THE PATTERN OF ANSWERS, THEREBY PSYCHING THEMSELVES OUT AND SOMETIMES EVEN CHANGING THEIR (CORRECT) ANSWERS .

The pattern of answer choices on the ACT is computer generated. Honestly, its completely randomized, and yet so often students say, Oh, I saw too many Es in a row, and that freaked me out, so I changed my answer to C.

Paying attention to the pattern in the answer choices is the death knell for your confidence and sanity, but changing your answer because of the pattern on the answer sheet is off-the-charts nuts. I dont want to waste time on this but Im deadly serious.

You know youve thought about whether the answer choice pattern matters. The pattern doesnt matter. Period.