The Ultimate Guide to Self-Studying for the ACT® 2024

I’m an expert tutor, and I’m sharing the best guide to studying for the ACT® Test. Parents and students alike can use this guide to work together for the student’s success. There are several options to self-study with advantages and drawback to each. Everything is discussed thoroughly in the article below.

Before you start, you should have a goal score in mind. This target might change as you study for the ACT® Test and narrow down the colleges you want to attend.

Baseline

The first step for self-studying is establishing a baseline. You want to do this so you’re only focusing on learning the material you don’t know. Some students feel like they should learn all of the material first, then take a practice test. You can do that, but it’s a very ineffective use of your time.

Instead, if a student has a baseline, he or she can avoid studying things he or she already knows. Focusing only on mistakes saves a lot of time.

You can also track progress from one test to another. Seeing a student’s score go up over time in a deliberate way can be highly motivating and confidence building.

How do you get a baseline? There are two options: take the real ACT® Test. Or take a mock practice test.

Real Test

You take a real test by signing up on the ACT&reg’s website. LINK Then you wait for your scores to come back in. The main advantage of this approach is the scores you receive were produced in an actual testing environment. That accounts any possible test anxiety, early morning grogginess, or environmental factor such as the room’s temperature or noise.

While it’s valuable to have official test scores, the scores alone aren’t the most helpful thing for self-studying. The ACT® Test also offerings something called a score report. It looks something like The concepts that are contained within an entire the document at this link.

The important thing you’re looking for here are the detailed results, in the bottom left-hand corner. That will provide you a section-by-section breakdown of the mistakes you make.

The ACT® Test lists your mistakes in their own “reporting categories.” For example, in the English Section, CSE or “Conventions of Standard English” corresponds to the following list: Punctuation, Commas, Who vs Whom, Apostrophes, Antecedents, Prepositions, Superlatives, and Countable Nouns, and Participles.

I’ve mapped the concepts to create free individualized study plans. Be advised that there’s no way to actually know from a score report which topics you missed. The ACT® Test only provides general categories. The concepts that are contained within an entire category are known and listed here.

Practice Test

There’s another way to establish a baseline that provides more in-depth insights. I’ve created a grader that you can use for free to generate a specific study plan.

Here’s a more in-depth, step-by-step guide on how to use the grader.

Here’s my quick guide:

1. 1) Use a proctoring video to keep time
2. 2) Use the sheet to record your answers
3. 3) Upload the file to the grader as word .doc
4. 4) Hit submit
5. Done!

You’ll get a document that looks like this. You can print it or save it to your computer. I made this specific score report for demonstration purposes only by typing in random answers

Then, all you have to do is study the given topics. You can navigate to them easily by looking at this page that lists every topic.

That makes self-studying very easy for most students. All of these articles have carefully designed to teach the relevant content. There’s no fat, filler, or any content that doesn’t appear on the ACT® Test.

Targeted Studying

Now that you have a baseline, you will be able to study to reach your goal. Focus first on the topics that come easier to you. All questions are worth the same amount. So be strategic in choosing to study those topics that are easier for you.

Here are the topics that most students study to gain the easiest points.

English

The content on the English Test is seldom taught in high schools. Public schools, private schools, domestic or international – hardly anybody teaches this stuff.

Punctuation

Punctuation rules are very strict and common on the ACT® English Test.

Comma Rules

Most students think a comma indicates a verbal pause. While you might pause for a comma, you need to have one of four reasons to use a comma, otherwise it is considered wrong for the ACT® English Test.

Kept/Deleted

There are quite a few of these questions. Students tend to find this topic straightforward after studying it. There’s a little strategy involved too.

Main Idea

Most students tend to miss these questions. There is usually only 1 main idea question per section for a total of 5 on the English Test. It’s not a bad thing to review, but it shouldn’t the first or only topic to look at.

Math

Don’t be intimidated by the Math. Most of the math questions are at an 11th-graders level. In general, students struggle the most with slowing down, reading the question, and ensuring they get the basic arithmetic correct.

Read the question

Don’t skip this section, especially if your score is below a 28. Often, the math questions contain information vital to solving the question. Take a minute to read this section as it could help you gain points.

Signed Numbers

ACT® Math Test gives students problems with a lot of tricky positive and negative signs. This topic is straightforward. It’s also one of the areas where most students can earn quite a few points.

Inequalities/Absolute Value

These topics always show up in the math test. The ACT® Test makes them harder than most such problems you’ve seen by asking students to graph inequalities and less often absolute values.

There are also sometimes positive/negative signs involved. Most students can earn a few points by studying these topics.

Basic Trig

Basic trig is an easy way for most students to earn a point or two. The ACT® Test uses trig concepts to ask algebra questions. So instead of having the student solve for a number, the Test asks students to solve the equation all the way up to, but not including, the solution.

Students who have had trig sometimes get confused because they can solve these questions easily – but the answer choices don’t actually reflect a full solution.

Students who haven’t had trig (or pre-calc) can be intimated by basic trig. Once they see we’re just applying the basic principles of SOHCAHTOA, they can also earn a few easy points.

PIN & PIA

These are two pretty ingenious strategies that take the form of a standardized test and use it against itself. Since a standardized test has to provide certain values in the answers, sometimes you can use the answer choices instead of solving the entire problem. This method gets students a lot of points very fast.

Reading

It’s okay if you don’t read as much as you want to – this is the one section where a bit of strategy can go a long way. I’m only including strategy here. Each student should review whatever sections he or she wants to, either based on the study plan, his or her own intuition, or both.

Those who enjoy to read have an easier time earning a higher score.

Passage Order

The passages on the ACT® Reading Test naturally lend themselves to certain types of questions. The first passage is always literature, which tends to have more main idea questions. The last passage is always natural science, which tends to have more line reference questions, and fewer main idea questions.

Question Order

The main idea question is usually, but not always, the first question on each passage. It can be very difficult, confusing, and time consuming for a student to read a passage and then immediately try to answer a main idea question. Rather than do that, students can grow more comfortable answering all of the questions in a single passage in a way that each question builds on itself.

Science

Some students feel a great deal of anxiety because this section is technically called “Science Test.” There is very little actual science you need to memorize for the ACT® Science Test.

Interpolate/Extrapolate

The ACT® Science Test wants students to reason between, above, and below values. These questions are very common and tend to be quite straightforward once you know what you’re looking for.

Validity of Scientific Conclusions

This is still a common question type, though much less so than the other two above. The Test wants students to think about what the experiment means, and how the measurements were designed to be taken to test a hypothesis. Framed that way, most students find these questions straight forward.

Outside Science Knowledge

There is some, but not much, outside science knowledge on the ACT® Science. An example would be at what temperature Celsius does water freeze? 0 degrees Celsius. The outside science knowledge is rarely repeated, nor does it ever constitute more than a question on a single test – maybe once in a blue moon there are 2 questions.

My best advice is to worry about this topic when a student is scoring above a 32 on the Science. In that case, they can do a little more studying. Otherwise, the ratio of a lot of studying to earn not many points isn’t worth it for most students.

Additional help

I’ve also compiled lists of additional free resources for students.

Here’s a list of additional resources that can also help.

With the information above, students should be able to make significant progress self-studying for the ACT®. When he or is she ready, the student should take another practice test or try the official exam.

Retest/Test

It’s important to test your progress while studying without over doing it. Each person needs to figure out how many practice tests to take and how often to measure progress.

If you have time before you need to have a certain ACT® Test Score, my professional recommendation is to space out the practice tests. Three seems to be a nice number of practice tests for a lot of students, but not all. Some people take more; some people take fewer.

Practice Test or the Real Test?

The decision to take another practice test or to sit for another official administration of a real test as a practice test needs to be made at each family’s discretion. The more confident everyone is that a student is going to reach or get close to a specific score, the more strongly I’d recommend taking an official test.

Practice Test

It’s smartest to take practice tests, especially in the format available on my website, when you still want to track your progress. This way it’s really easy to see how your studying is paying off. As your target score and practice test scores get close, consider taking a real test.

Real Test

If you take a real test, then you won’t get granular results back. But if you have prepared for the ACT® Test well, you should know, within reason, which takes you missed on the Real Test. You can even figure out which topics you missed (to a reasonable extent) by using the score report mapping above.

When to Find a Private Tutor

Once you’ve learned what you can through self-study, then it makes the most sense in terms of time and money to seek out a private tutor. While most students can self-study a lot of the content, few can master the content alone.

A private tutor can help you with the last few topics that are preventing you from reaching your desired score. A good tutor can also show you the things you don’t realize you don’t know. It can be very useful to have a guide after looking at a lot of the content by yourself.

Cross the Finish Line

You’ve self-studied, and everything has gone great! Congrats! You got the score that you wanted. Now it’s time to send the scores to your scores out.

Send the scores to your school

Though this section logically comes at the end, you’ll be looking at how to send your scores while preparing for the ACT® Test. That’s because each school may have different requirements. Some will allow you to superscore. Others will require the science (once it becomes optional ni 2025) and writing. Others won’t.

Once your scores come in, send them to the relevant school so you can await an admission decision. Good luck!

You can also check out scholarships on this page.

Conclusion

There’s a lot you can do study by yourself for the ACT® Test. Use the above guides to chart your own path. Do what you can by yourself. There’s a lot you can learn by yourself.

After that, your family may discuss working with a private tutor. If a student already has demonstrated knowledge and weaknesses through data, it’s more efficient for a tutor to help with those areas. The alternative would be for a tutor to spend time discerning the strengths and weaknesses, which could be time consuming and costly, but ultimately very worthwhile.

Self-studying helps most students earn a lot of points.

How much did your score or your son or daughter’s score go up from using this guide? Comment below so others can hear what you did to find success.