Beating the ACT - Junior Year

TLDR:

Take a national ACT test! Not just a practice, but a national test.
Find a strategy training!
- Private Test Prep or Group Training
Take the national test again! & Again! & Again!
- Keep taking the test until you get the score you want!

Video Transcript:

Okay, so it's your junior year or your students junior year, and you want to know how to go about attacking the ACT test this year to give you the highest possible results. In this video, I'm going to give you a few thoughts that hopefully afterwards you'll have a good idea of how to have the most amount of success for you or your student this year.

Step one. You got to take the ACT. Many of you have taken an ACT practice test through TorchPrep. If you haven't taken an ACT yet, look at the links below. You need to register for one and just go take it. You need to get started this year.

The next question we typically coach families through this what about ACT test prep? I'll give you a few thoughts about test prep. What ACT test prep is not, in my opinion, is content review. The best way to aggregate ACT content is in the classroom. You have experts (teachers) who have been trained and are professionals in teaching you English or math. These are the best possible people to teach you the ACT content.

Think of it like this. The ACT is kind of like all of high school education smash into one really long, complicated test. If ACT prep isn't content, then what is it?

The way we approach it and the way we like to coach students and families is ACT test prep is less about content and more about strategy. Not how do you prepare for the ACT, but how do you study the ACT? How do you break down the test to assure that what you've been taught in high school can best translate to what the test wants you to know? We like to say the ACT is not a test that tests what you know, but it's a test that tests how well you can test.

When I think of test prep, albeit, private tutoring or large group tutoring, what I want to coach a kid to look for is making sure that they're being trained in the process of translating what they learned in school to what the test wants. It's kind of like a game, so how do you beat it?

Now, the last part, and this is an important part for families, is what do you do in terms of planning for the ACT test? How many times should you take it? What's a good score? What's a bad score? Well, we had videos on what's a good ACT score. You can check that out. But specifically around this junior year, these are my general rules for testing.

One, we want you to take it early fall, fall semester, of junior year. In early spring, typically schools would administer an ACT test at the school (School funded test). That's awesome. But what it is not is the end of your journey. We hope to see families take the ACT again in April, June, or July of the junior year.

In this case, to summarize, think of it like this. Yes, ACT and your junior year are the same thing. But the ACT is a test that you can take multiple times, you want to be trained in how to take the test, and you want to actually go and take the test multiple times.

This journey doesn't have to be so overwhelming. Think less of a sprint and more of a marathon.

You can do it.

Make a plan.

You got this.