How to Prep for the ACT

Let's get the fear out in the open: you're worried your kid isn't a "good test-taker." You've heard about students who study for months, spend thousands on tutoring, and barely move the needle. You're wondering if ACT prep is just throwing money into a hole.

It isn't. But the way most families approach it is.

The average ACT score in 2024 was 19.4 out of 36, the lowest composite score in over 30 years¹. That number should make you angry, not discouraged. It means the bar is lower than it's been in decades, and targeted prep gives your student a real competitive edge.

The problem isn't that prep doesn't work. The problem is that most prep programs treat every student like they have the same weaknesses, use the same study schedule, and need the same amount of time. That's lazy, and it wastes your money. If you're a rising senior trying to fit ACT prep into an already packed schedule, our summer before college checklist shows you how to prioritize test prep alongside everything else you need to do.

ACT vs. SAT Decision

Before you spend a single dollar on ACT prep, you need to answer one question: is the ACT actually the right test for your student?

This is where most families go wrong. They pick the ACT because their neighbor's kid took it, or because they heard it's "easier for science students," or because their school offered a free testing day. None of those are good reasons. Our full SAT vs ACT comparison breaks down the differences in detail.

The tests measure different things in different ways. The ACT gives you 60 seconds per math question. The SAT gives you about 95 seconds. If your kid is a fast but sometimes careless worker, the ACT's pace suits them. If they're methodical and need to think through problems, the SAT is a better fit.

The ACT has a dedicated science section. The SAT doesn't. But the ACT science section barely tests science knowledge. It tests whether you can read graphs and data tables quickly. A student who is great at biology but slow at reading charts will struggle with it.

The ACT English section is 75 questions in 45 minutes. That's 36 seconds per question. The SAT reading and writing section gives you roughly 70 seconds per question. If your student freezes under extreme time pressure, the ACT will punish them.

Stop listening to people who say one test is "easier" than the other. Neither test is easier. They reward different cognitive styles. Your job is to figure out which style matches your kid, and the only way to do that is with a real diagnostic, not a guess.

Where Prep Time Gets Wasted

Here is the single biggest mistake in ACT prep: students study everything instead of studying the right things.

A typical ACT prep course runs 8-12 weeks and covers every section equally. Your student spends two weeks reviewing English grammar rules they already know, two weeks on math concepts they mastered in 10th grade, two weeks on reading comprehension strategies they'll forget by test day, and two weeks on science reasoning they could have learned in four focused sessions.

That's four weeks of wasted study time out of eight. Half the prep was useless.

The right approach starts with a full diagnostic practice test. Not a "mini assessment" or a 30-question placement quiz. A full four-section, 2-hour-55-minute practice ACT taken under real timing conditions.

Then you analyze the results by question type, not by section. Your student didn't "do badly on math." They missed 6 out of 8 coordinate geometry questions and got every algebra question right. Those are completely different problems requiring completely different study plans.

Most prep programs won't do this analysis for you because it requires individualized attention, which is expensive to provide. So they default to the assembly-line approach: teach everything to everyone and hope some of it sticks.

The Four ACT Sections

English (75 questions, 45 minutes)

This is the highest-ROI section for most students. English scores respond to prep faster than any other section because the rules are finite and testable. There are roughly 15 grammar and punctuation rules that account for 80% of English questions.

Learn those 15 rules cold and you'll pick up 4-6 points on this section alone. That's not a guess. Students who focus specifically on comma rules, pronoun agreement, verb tense consistency, parallel structure, and redundancy elimination see the fastest gains.

The other 20% of English questions test rhetorical skills: organization, style, strategy. These are harder to prep for, but most students can safely ignore them until they've maxed out the grammar-based questions.

Math (60 questions, 60 minutes)

The ACT math section tests a wider range of topics than the SAT, including trigonometry and logarithms. But here's what most prep courses won't tell you: the questions are arranged roughly in order of difficulty, and questions 1-40 cover pre-algebra through intermediate algebra. Those first 40 questions are where your score gains live.

A student who gets questions 1-40 right and guesses on 41-60 will score around a 27. That's an 85th percentile score². For most students applying to most colleges, that's more than enough.

Reading (40 questions, 35 minutes)

This is the section that trips up good students. You have 8 minutes and 45 seconds per passage, and each passage has 10 questions. That's about 52 seconds per question after accounting for reading time.

The key insight most prep ignores: ACT reading passages always appear in the same order. Prose fiction (or literary narrative) is first. Social science is second. Humanities third. Natural science fourth. Students who know which passage types they're fastest at should do those first, regardless of the printed order.

If your kid flies through natural science passages but struggles with literary analysis, start with passage four. You'll bank extra time for the harder passages.

Science (40 questions, 35 minutes)

This section has the most misleading name in standardized testing. The ACT "Science" section is a data interpretation test wearing a lab coat. You don't need to know the Krebs cycle or Newton's third law. You need to read graphs, interpret tables, and compare conflicting viewpoints.

Students who practice reading scientific charts and graphs for two weeks will see more improvement on this section than students who review biology and chemistry content for two months. Our ACT science section strategy guide walks through the backwards approach that consistently produces 30+ scores.

ACT Prep Costs

Let's talk about money, because families make terrible decisions here.

Look at those numbers carefully. The score gains for a $1,500 group class and a $60 book are nearly identical for most students. The expensive options only justify their cost in two situations: your student has zero self-discipline and will not study independently, or your student is already scoring above 30 and needs expert help to squeeze out the last few points for Ivy-level competitiveness.

For everyone else, the sweet spot is $100-400 on an online course plus official practice tests. That's it.

8-Week ACT Prep Plan

This plan assumes your student has taken a full diagnostic test and identified their two weakest question types.

Total study time: roughly 40-60 hours. That's 5-7 hours per week, or about 45 minutes to an hour per day. More than that and you'll burn out. Less and you won't build enough momentum.

Score-to-School Reality Check

Here's the part where I'm going to be blunt, because no one else will be.

Your ACT score determines which tier of schools will take you seriously. Not exclusively, but meaningfully. And the tiers are more compressed than you think.

A student with a 28 ACT is competitive at the University of Michigan (middle 50%: 31-34), the University of Florida (middle 50%: 29-33), and hundreds of strong state flagships³. A student with a 32 is competitive at Vanderbilt (middle 50%: 33-35) and Washington University in St. Louis (middle 50%: 33-35)³.

The difference between a 28 and a 32 is roughly 15-20 more correct answers across the entire test. That's four extra right answers per section. With good prep, that's an achievable jump for a student who started at 28.

But going from 24 to 32 is a different story. That requires mastering content you don't currently know, building speed you don't currently have, and developing test-taking instincts that take months to build. An 8-point jump is possible but rare, and it requires more than a prep course. It requires a fundamental change in how your student approaches timed assessments.

Be honest with yourself about where your student is starting and where they can realistically finish. A 24-to-28 jump is solid and achievable. A 28-to-32 jump is ambitious but doable with serious effort. Anything beyond a 4-5 point composite improvement should be considered a best-case outcome, not a baseline expectation.

When to Take the ACT

Most students take the ACT in the spring of junior year, which aligns with the broader planning-for-college-in-high-school timeline. That's fine but not ideal for everyone.

The best testing window depends on your student's math coursework. The ACT tests content up through Algebra II and basic trigonometry. If your student won't finish Algebra II until the end of junior year, a spring test date means they're taking the ACT before they've learned 15-20% of the math content.

In that case, the September test date of senior year is smarter. Yes, it feels late. But a September score arrives at colleges in plenty of time for Regular Decision deadlines, and your student will have actually learned the math being tested.

ACT offers seven test dates per year: September, October, December, February, April, June, and July⁵. Students can take the ACT up to 12 times total, though most need only two or three attempts.

Improving the Science Section

I'm going to say something that sounds counterintuitive: the science section is where most students should focus their prep time first.

Not because it's the hardest section. Because it's the most improvable. Students routinely gain 3-5 points on science with just 10-15 hours of targeted practice, because the section rewards a specific reading strategy that almost no one uses naturally.

The strategy: don't read the passage introductions. Go straight to the questions. When a question references a figure or table, look at that figure. When a question asks about a trend, find the relevant data and read the axis labels. Only read the passage text when a question specifically asks about experimental design or a scientist's viewpoint.

This approach cuts your time per passage by 30-40% and eliminates the confusion that comes from trying to understand complex experimental setups before you know what you're being asked.

Most students read the science passages like they'd read a textbook: top to bottom, trying to understand everything before attempting questions. That's backwards. The questions tell you what to understand.

The ACT Writing Section

The ACT Writing section is optional. It adds 40 minutes and costs an extra $25. Most colleges don't require it. As of 2025, even the University of California system (which used to require it) no longer considers ACT Writing scores⁵.

Check every school on your student's list. If none of them require or recommend the ACT Writing section, don't take it. There is zero upside and real downside: a mediocre writing score sitting next to a strong composite can raise unnecessary questions.

If you do need it, the scoring rubric rewards organized arguments with specific examples, not beautiful prose. A formulaic five-paragraph essay with clear transitions and two concrete examples will score an 8 or above. Save your literary ambitions for the college application essay.

ACT Scores and Scholarships

This is where the ROI conversation gets real.

At many state universities, ACT score thresholds directly determine merit scholarship amounts. At the University of Alabama, a 32 ACT with a 3.5 GPA qualifies for full tuition, worth roughly $120,000 over four years. A 30 ACT with the same GPA gets a partial scholarship worth about $80,000³. Two points on the ACT is a $40,000 difference.

At Iowa State University, a 27 ACT qualifies for a $6,000 annual scholarship. A 30 ACT qualifies for $8,000 annually. At the University of Kentucky, a 31 ACT with a 3.5 GPA earns a full-tuition scholarship³.

These are automatic, merit-based awards. No separate application. No essay. Just hit the score threshold and the money appears.

This is why ACT prep for students in the 26-30 range is one of the highest-return investments in the entire college process. A $200 prep course that lifts your score from 28 to 31 could be worth $40,000-$120,000 in scholarship money. Show me another investment with that return. You can't.

Read more about scholarship strategies that actually work and how your test scores fit into the bigger picture of choosing the right school.

"Not a Good Test-Taker"

Parents say this all the time: "My kid is smart but just isn't a good test-taker." This is a real thing, but it's not what most people think it is.

"Bad test-taker" usually means one of four things: test anxiety that causes physical symptoms and mental blanking, poor time management under pressure, difficulty with the specific question formats used on standardized tests, or an undiagnosed learning difference like ADHD or processing speed issues.

Each of these has a different solution. Lumping them all into "bad test-taker" and hiring a tutor is like going to the doctor and saying "I feel bad" without describing your symptoms. You'll get a generic treatment that probably won't fix your specific problem.

If your student has documented test anxiety, look into ACT accommodations. Students with qualifying conditions can receive extended time (time-and-a-half or double time), extra breaks, a separate testing room, or other modifications. The application process takes 4-6 weeks through ACT's Accessibility and Accommodations system⁵.

If it's a time management problem, that's a prep issue with a prep solution. Practice under timed conditions until the pacing becomes automatic.

If it's a question format issue, your student needs to learn ACT-specific strategies, not more content. The ACT asks questions in predictable patterns, and learning those patterns is a skill that can be taught.

And if it's a learning difference that hasn't been diagnosed, get the evaluation. It will help your student not just on the ACT but throughout college. Many families discover ADHD or processing speed differences during test prep, and the diagnosis opens doors to support they didn't know existed.

Your ACT Prep Decision Framework

Stop overthinking this. Here's what to do, based on where your student is right now.

If your student hasn't taken a practice test yet: Stop reading. Go to ACT Academy and take a full-length practice test this weekend. Everything else follows from that baseline score.

If your student scored 20-24 on the diagnostic: Use an online course ($100-400) and focus on English grammar rules and science data interpretation. These two areas have the highest point-per-hour return. Expect a 3-5 point composite improvement over 8 weeks.

If your student scored 25-29: This is the sweet spot for prep ROI. Focus on pacing and your two weakest question types. Self-study with official practice tests ($30-60) is sufficient for most students in this range. Consider a tutor only if self-study hasn't produced results after 4 weeks.

If your student scored 30+: You're optimizing at the margins. Every additional point requires significantly more effort. A private tutor ($80-150/hour for 10-15 sessions) makes sense here because the score gains translate directly into scholarship dollars at this level.

If your student scored below 20: Be honest about whether the ACT is the right path. Some students are better served by focusing on GPA, extracurriculars, and applying to test-optional schools. A below-20 ACT score sent to selective schools does more harm than not sending a score at all. Consider whether the SAT might be a better fit.

Think about how your test scores fit into the broader college selection process and how they connect to what you might study.

Your next step is concrete: take the diagnostic test, identify the two biggest areas for improvement, and start a focused 8-week plan. Don't sign up for a $2,000 course. Don't buy seven prep books. Don't panic. The ACT is learnable, and the right kind of prep works. The wrong kind just makes test prep companies richer.

FAQ

How long should I study for the ACT?

Plan for 40-60 hours of total study time spread over 8-12 weeks. That works out to about 5-7 hours per week. Studying more than 60 hours produces diminishing returns for most students. Studying less than 30 hours usually isn't enough to build lasting improvements.

Is the ACT easier than the SAT?

Neither test is universally easier. The ACT has more questions with less time per question, a dedicated science section, and tests a wider range of math topics. The SAT gives more time per question and has no science section. The best test for your student depends on their cognitive style, not which test is "easier." Take a practice test of each and compare percentile scores.

Can I superscore the ACT?

Yes. ACT introduced superscoring in 2020, which means they will combine your highest section scores from multiple test dates into a single superscore composite. About 90% of colleges that accept the ACT will use superscores, but verify with each school on your list. This means retaking the ACT to improve one weak section is a smart strategy.

Is ACT prep worth the money?

It depends on what you're buying. Free and low-cost prep ($0-400) delivers nearly identical score gains to expensive courses ($1,500+) for most students. The exception is private tutoring for students in the 30+ range competing for top-tier scholarships, where each additional point has significant financial value. For students in the 25-30 range, a $200 online course that lifts your score by 2-3 points could translate to $20,000-$80,000 in merit aid.

How many times should I take the ACT?

Two to three times is the sweet spot. Your first attempt establishes a baseline. Your second attempt, after targeted prep, captures most of your improvement. A third attempt makes sense if you're within 1-2 points of a scholarship threshold. Taking it more than three times rarely produces meaningful gains and can signal to admissions officers that you've hit your ceiling.

When is the best time to take the ACT?

For most students, spring of junior year (April or June) is ideal because you've completed most of the math curriculum tested. If your student hasn't finished Algebra II by spring, September of senior year gives them the full math background while still meeting Regular Decision deadlines. Avoid the December test date if possible, as holiday stress and dark winter mornings don't create ideal testing conditions.

Should I take the ACT Writing section?

Only if a school on your list requires or recommends it. As of 2025, most colleges, including the entire UC system, do not consider ACT Writing scores. Check each school's requirements individually. If none require it, skip it and save 40 minutes of test fatigue.

Related Articles

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• Scholarships for College Students: Why Most Students Search Wrong (And the 7 Types Actually Worth Your Time)
• The Real Truth About College Scholarships: Why Most Families Give Up Too Early (And How to Actually Win)
• College Application Tips That Actually Move the Needle (And 5 Things You Can Stop Worrying About)
• The AP Exam Prep Guide That Actually Works for Your Learning Style ...

Related data: Average ACT Score Data

Footnotes

1. ACT, Inc. (2024). The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2024. ACT. https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act/scores/understanding-your-scores.html ↩ ↩²

2. ACT, Inc. (2024). ACT Score Percentile Ranks: National Norms. ACT. https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act.html ↩

3. National Association for College Admission Counseling. (2024). State of College Admission Report. NACAC. https://www.nacacnet.org/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. FairTest. (2025, January 15). Test-Optional Growth Chronology. National Center for Fair & Open Testing. https://fairtest.org/ ↩

5. ACT, Inc. (2025). ACT Test Dates and Registration. ACT. https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act/registration.html ↩ ↩² ↩³