The Basics of the ACT
The ACT consists of four scored sections: English, math, reading, and science. There is also an optional writing section, which consists of an essay only.
English
The 45-minute English section consists of 75 multiple-choice questions. There are four answer choices given for each question. The questions test both rules of grammar and rhetoric. The grammar questions focus primarily on pronouns, verbs and punctuation. Parallelism is tested lightly.
Math
The 60-minute math section consists of 60 multiple-choice questions. There are five answer choices given for each question. The math questions range from simple arithmetic and elementary Geometry through quadratic functions, Trigonometry and logarithms. While students who have completed Algebra II, Trigonometry and Geometry should be familiar with most of the topics on the ACT, students generally need to have completed a course in Pre-Calculus (or its equivalent) to have seen all of the topics covered on the ACT. The ACT math topics cover a wider range of topics than the SAT. There is sometimes an obscure math topic that appears on one ACT and is never repeated. However, there are fewer complicated word problems on the ACT than the SAT and weaker math students can learn strategies to answer many of the problems on the ACT. However, students who are slow at math will have a hard time finishing this section.
Reading
The 35-minute reading section consists of 40 multiple-choice questions. There are four answer choices given for each question. The reading section consists of four reading passages (one of which will contain two shorter “paired” passages) followed by 10 questions each. All of the questions in this section are reading comprehension. There are no strictly vocabulary based questions. However, vocabulary is tested through the reading passages and comprehension questions (but to a lesser extent than on the SAT). As there are 40 questions to answer in only 35 minutes, slower readers have a very hard time completing this section.
Science
The 35-minute science section consists of 40 multiple-choice questions. There are four answer choices given for each question. The science section consists of six or seven short passages each detailing several experiments or scientific findings followed by five to eight questions about the experiments. This section essentially consists of reading the charts and graphs provided and answering questions about them. While it is important to understand how to conduct experiments and how to read the scientific information, very little actual scientific knowledge is required. However, this section is extremely time pressured, and most students find it challenging to answer all 40 questions in 35 minutes.
Writing (Optional Essay)
The ACT provides an optional writing section. This section consists of one 40-minute essay. The essay provides students with a description of an issue and then gives three perspectives on that issue. Students are asked to “evaluate and analyze” the perspectives and to “state and develop” their own perspective on the issue. Finally, students are instructed to “explain the relationship” between their perspective and the three stated on the test.
The essay receives a score out of 36, but this score is not used in formulating a student’s overall score and most schools do not give it much weight. However, like with the SAT, while this section is ostensibly optional (and most schools do not seem to count it), most competitive colleges require it, so students should take the ACT with the writing section.
Scoring
Each of the four sections of the ACT is scored from 1 to 36. The four section scores are then averaged (and rounded to the nearest whole number) to produce the student’s composite score.
A raw ACT section score is determined by counting the number of questions a student answers correctly. Students do not lose points on the ACT for answering a question incorrectly. The raw score is then converted to a scaled score.
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