College is one of the most important things in our life, and earning the diploma is a milestone that many of us have to accomplish if we want a bright future and a stable job position in the future. Obviously, for a good job that will be more than enough to earn you a living, you’ll need to get a diploma from a reputable college. To do this, you need to get into such a college, which is probably the first time in your life where you’ll face an ACT Test.
Doing well on one of these is not an easy task, but with enough effort, you’ll be able to get better results than the others, and that’s exactly what we’re here to help you with today. Because of the current situation with the Covid-19 pandemic, many of these tests might be taken online, but that will mostly depend on what the college has decided. Either way, being well-prepared is crucial in both scenarios, so let’s take a look at some of the things that you can do to maximize your results on the test.
1. Getting familiar with the format
Some ACTs are in a different format than others, and this can be sometimes confusing for a person who is used to practicing only in one format. This is why we think that it’s very important to get familiar with the other formats, either by finding online examples of the tests, and practicing on as many of them as you can. The more familiar it feels when you get to the real thing, the less pressure you’ll have, and that usually means better results as well.
Also, for those who are new into all this, we would like to remind you that there’s a difference between the ACT and SAT, so don’t confuse one with the other. Since this is quite a big deal to many students, there are a lot of websites nowadays providing useful resources and information about the best courses. They have the purpose of helping you get more familiar with the entire process, and one of those examples is Digital Vaults. Get familiar with quality prep courses.
2. Make a schedule for studying
A lot of scientists link studying with exercising, and here’s why. You cannot overtrain your body in a day and then expect to have the best results without giving it some recovery time. The same thing goes with studying. Creating a schedule that’s consistent and makes you spend three to four hours studying every day will be a lot more efficient than spending entire nights trying to learn in the last couple of days before the test. Having such a balanced and consistent schedule makes a lot of difference.
If you have a hard time coming up with your plan or schedule, then preparatory courses might be something for you which provides a good planning and breaking down of subtopics that enables you to tackle the tasks much easier, for example: https://examgenius.org.
The rest is up to you. Get rid of all the distractions and simply focus on learning. While practicing, try to get better scores each time, because if you’re not competitive with yourself, you’ll have a difficult time improving. It is also important that you use resources online to help you study. For example, you can use Grammarly if you are working on your writing or eMathHelp if you need to check over your math problems.
3. Bring an admission ticket copy
Now for the things that you need to bring on the day of testing, one of the most important ones will be a printed copy of your admission. You can get this by logging in to the official website and finding this information, then simply printing it. Since people use smartphones a lot these days, many students think that you can just screenshot this and show it as a picture instead of printing it, but that’s not the case. Anything that comes in a digital format will not be accepted, so don’t make the mistake of doing that, and print it instead. We’re not sure if things have changed because of the pandemic now, regarding bringing papers and all of that, but it’s how it was before the outbreak started.
4. Proof of identity
Nowadays we have school IDs, Driver licenses, passports, and other documents that can be accepted as viable identity proof. Make sure to bring at least one of these, or even better a couple of them in case you end up losing one or realizing last-minute that something is expired. You’ll need this and you won’t be able to take the test if you don’t have it.
Since everything is logged directly into the system, you cannot try to “bypass” this security layer, even if you have a friend or someone you know who works as an administrator. Make sure that you bring valid ID proof. Remember that credit cards of birth certificates, as well as employee ID’s from your company or store where you work at, are not accepted. Don’t make the mistake of arriving with one of these because you won’t be allowed to proceed and you’ll just end up wasting your time.
5. Set of pencils and approved gear
One pencil is simply not enough, because we’ve all been in a situation where the only one we had broke or stopped writing properly out of some weird reason. You cannot risk allowing something like this to happen to you, which is why we recommend that you bring an entire set just in case. A quality eraser is important as well, so if you don’t have one laying at home somewhere, make sure to invest in one, they’re not expensive.
Last but not least, by “approved gear” we mean items that are known to be accepted, such as an approved calculator. You will only be allowed to bring some calculator models, but only with the most basic functions, and without any extra ones that might be unclear to the administrators. You cannot use your smartphone as a calculator because that’s forbidden, so don’t try it. You’re allowed to bring a hand watch with you, but only a model that doesn’t make any sounds, and a smartwatch is also not allowed. If it allows you to cheat, it won’t be allowed, so a regular watch is fine.
Conclusion
Our ACT Tests have a huge impact on our college submissions, and whether we’ll be able to do well on them or not will depend on how prepared we’ll be on the test day. This is why we decided to write an article that’s going to cover some of the most important things you need to keep in mind regarding the test, so feel free to use all of our tips to enhance your entire experience. We wish you great luck on the test and we hope that you do well.
