The Best Time to Prepare for the ACT® Test According to an Expert Tutor

Preparing your son or daughter to take the ACT® Test can yield dividends down the road. The more he or she takes the relevant classes to prepare, the better score you can reasonably expect. That means less time studying specifically the test, and more free time for your family.

What’s on the ACT® Test?

I’ll link you to this page where you can see a more detailed breakdown. The important take-away comes from the ACT® Test itself. Questions are directly related to what students have learned in high school courses.

That should alleviate most of your general concerns about how to prepare for the Test from taking High School courses. There is a lot of strategy and specific domain knowledge specific to the ACT® Test. There’s just as much material that a student can reasonably be expected to have seen already in high school.

What Courses Should a High School Student Take to Prepare?

The ACT’s Official recommendation is a good starting place. They recommend the following:

1. English - 4 Years
2. Math - 3 years (including Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II)
3. Science - 3 years (including Biology, Chemistry, and Physics)
4. Social Studies - 3 Years

That’s a fine recommendation. The part I would emphasize is really the 3 years of math. I’ll break it down further below.

English

The grammar and rhetoric on the ACT® English Test is seldom taught in high schools. English classes are important for any teenager. Their value is of limited and indirect use for the ACT® Test.

Math

Math is the really important one. There’s a lot of math content on the ACT® Test. If a student hasn’t taken Algebra and Geometry, he or she is going to have a huge deficit to overcome to get an 18 or higher.

Trig/Pre-calc can be very helpful. The trig on the ACT® Test is super basic. There are also almost trig graphs. Both of these topics are easy to learn for most students, even those who haven’t had trig before.

Pre-calc provides a lot of practice that’s relevant to the Math Test. Most pre-calc classes cover exponent rules, basic number theory, conic sections, advanced functions, sequences, matrices and vectors. Those questions appear regularly. No specific test asks about those concepts more than once or two.

A lot of High Schools combine pre-calc and trig into the same class.

For more advanced students, higher-level courses can only help. Students will build confidence in solving math problems. They’ll gain experience keeping all of the numbers straight so their calculations come out correct.

There are rotating topics in math on the ACT® Math Test. These topics only appear once ever and then never if seldom again. Advanced level math can help here, but it’s not required to get in 99% percentile.

Reading

The best way to prepare for the ACT® Reading Test is by reading a lot. English or Social Science courses may help to this end. It’s still possible for most students to get a good reading score without dedicating their entire school year to reading.

Science

While science classes are critical to gain admission to many 4-year colleges, they’re of limited value to the ACT® Science Test. That’s because there’s limited Science on the ACT® Test.

There’s a lot of reading charts, graphs, and tables on the Science Test. There’s some scientific reasoning that most students grasp easily. There’s little outside science knowledge.

The outside science knowledge that does appear tends to be pretty basic (what temperature Celsius does water freeze at?) and tends not to show up more than once. Finding a list of outside science knowledge from previous tests may not be very helpful.

On that topic, there’s little benefit for the purpose of the ACT® Science Test, strictly speaking, to take advanced science classes.

Test Prep Timelines

Some parents want their kids to prepare for the ACT® Test far too early. Some parents start their son or daughter unfortunately a little close to the deadline for taking the ACT® Test. Most strike a nice balance between when to push their student to take the Test vs when their student is ready from having taken the requisite classes.

Before 10th grade

This is way too early to be preparing for the ACT ® Test.

You can take the pre-act. But its use value is limited. It’s very hard to prepare anyone before 10th grade. Because these students will have questions about content. The best answer is: “you will cover it in algebra.”

Only few parents actually want this kind of a head start. My advice is that there’s so little value in starting this early, you shouldn’t do it.

If your son or daughter plans to pursue National Merit Scholar status, he or she should be preparing for the PSAT® Test.

10th grade

Still too early for most students. It’s good to get a head start on things in general. You want your son or daughter to be well prepared to take the test. For most people, 10th grade can be too early.

The summer between 10th and 11th grade is a fine time to start preparing. Working towards going to college can give you child motivation to do well.

One notable exception: sports scholarships. Student athletes can be recruited after their sophomore year. If your son or daughter will need a certain score to secure an athletic full ride, then it can make sense to prepare in the 10th grade. The odds are that your family has been preparing your son or daughter’s academics well in advanced to anticipate sports scholarship.

11th grade

This is an optimal time to prepare for the ACT® Test. By this point, students have seen most of the content the ACT® Test will cover, or at least they’ve seen enough to bridge any content gaps that may exist.

Preparing in the 11th grade year can also allow your son or daughter to recalibrate his or her academic efforts. This is particularly useful if there are some difficulties in certain areas.

For example, maybe your child wants to attend the same college you went to. If his or her math scores aren’t competitive, there is still sufficient time in 11th grade to put in the work required to make a significant improvement.

Summer Between 11th and 12th Grade

The summer between junior and senior year is a popular time to study for the ACT® Test. It’s a good time to do so too. Students often, but not always, have little else to do. They can dedicate the ~3 months to studying for the Test.

If a student discovers over the summer that he or she is struggling in a certain section, there’s still time to overcome content gaps. The last ACT® Test your child wants to take is the December administration, or earlier if he or she plans to attend a UC. See below for application deadlines.

12th grade

If you have no other choice, start preparing your child in 12th grade. The timeframe for making drastic improvements in score is closing. It’s absolutely possible, though. I’ve seen highly motivated students in 12th grade make huge increases in score.

Gap year?

Theres no expiration date on ACT® Test Scores and most colleges don’t have any guidance about this. My recommendation would be for your child to take the ACT® Test in his or her senior year. That way, all of the material is still fresh in their mind. If you’re asking this question because your son or daughter is planning a gap year, he or she should be fine.

But also check out deferred enrollment. Most colleges offer the opportunity to secure enrollment, and then take a year off with admission to that college already lined up.

Admissions Timelines

You’ll need to consider which schools your son or daughter wants to apply to when planning for the ACT® Test. Most schools use the Common App, which has a uniform application process.

There is no uniform deadline for when a school no longer accepts ACT® Test Scores. Some colleges want the scores to be submitted by their own application deadline. Others allow test scores to be submitted after the admission deadline. Be sure to check your target schools for specific information.

An important note: The University of California system closes its admission earlier than most schools. They also don’t consider ACT® or SAT® Test scores when making admission or scholarship decisions, though that may change, as several notable schools have recently reversed their test-optional policy.

The Common Application

Most students use the common app for submitting their applications to colleges. Be advised the stated timelines given by the common app may not align with a college’s stated timeline.

EA/ED

If there’s a school you really want to attend, you can consider applying for early action or early decision. The meaning of each term, as well as the deadline for either, changes from school to school. Be sure to look at a college’s stated terms before applying early action or early decision.

You can usually only apply early to one private university. Since most of them share the Common App, they would know if you applied to more than one place early. The benefit of applying this way is that you hear back from that school first.

The decision isn’t always but can be binding. That means that some schools require early applicants to commit, but others don’t.

Early Application Deadlines

Don’t be confused by the discrepancy between the Common App’s deadline and a specific school’s deadline. Even though the common app says that Early Action ends Nov 1st, that may not be the full picture. Your best bet is always the schools website or admissions officer.

Consider this discrepancy between what the Common App says and what schools actually report:

We offer two decision plans for first-year applicants: Early Action and Regular Decision. The Early Action application deadline is November 1 with decisions released on or before January 31. The Regular Decision application deadline is January 15, with decisions released on or before March 31 .

Source

Regular admission

Regular admission is the college application most people know. The important piece of information regarding early admission is always to check the college’s website over the Common Application’s timelines. For example, the Common App above says the regular decision deadline is January 1st. Some schools close their regular decision applications earlier.

Harvard, for example, says:

Your portions of the application are due by the application deadlines (November 1 for Restrictive Early Action and January 1 for Regular Decision).

Source

UC schools

The University of California Schools close admission applications on December 2nd.

ACT® Test scores can be used to meet UC minimum eligibility requirements and/or course placement.

How far in Advance to Plan Test Prep?

The answer to this question really depends on a student’s goals. As a general rule, test prep should be done between 3 months and 3 weeks before taking the ACT® Test. That gives a student sufficient time to maximize his or her score.

Conclusion

Preparing for the ACT® Test before 10th grade has extremely limited value. The Test says the content is based on High School curriculum. That’s true. So preparing too far in advance would be virtually the same thing as taking regular High School classes.

Between 10th and 11th grade is a good time to prepare. Specific timelines depend on a student’s academic prowess and achievements.

It’s harder to prepare in 12th grade. If there are any content gaps missing, there’s less time to bridge them. The upside is that most students have an idea of their top choice colleges by this time, and the classes taken until then can help a student earn a higher score.

When do you think is the optimal time to prepare for the ACT® Test? Share below so other families can learn from your experience.