Preparing for the ACT Math Section and Improving Your Score

The ACT is one of the most important tests that students will ever have to take, as your scores are looked at closely by colleges when deciding on whether or not you will be admitted to their school. Since it is so important to score well, you should do some preparation in order to ensure a higher score. One of the three sections is the math section, and by simply doing a quick review a few times a week before the test you should be able to add a few points to your score.

The ACT math section mostly consists of questions that use algebra, pre-algebra, basic trigonometry, and graphing/coordinate planes. You should take some time to review some of these basic concepts, as they are often taught to students a year or two before the ACT is taken, so it can be easy to forget basic math concepts. It is not necessary to buy a review book, but it can be helpful to you. You can find most of what you need to review on the internet, as there are many free math help sites online.

A good strategy to use when actually taking the test is to try to solve the problem before looking at any of the possible answers. After solving the problem, then see if your answer matches any of the possible choices. That way, you won't be tempted to simply change part of your solution around to accommodate an answer that you think might be right. However, if you cannot come up with an answer to a problem, you may want to try solving the problem backwards. Put the answer in at the beginning and work backwards and see if you get back to the original problem.

Another important thing to remember when taking the ACT math section is that the diagrams and the pictures are often not drawn to scale. Normally, the problem will tell you when the diagram is not drawn to scale, but you should usually assume that it is not. Do not use the "looks like" method to estimate an answer because it will often not look right based on the picture. It may be helpful for you to actually redraw the picture in a more to scale way to help you visualize the problem. Just because an angle in a polygon might look like it is a perfectly right angle, it most likely is not 90 degrees unless the problem specifically tells you that it is.