How to Ace the ACT: Proven Strategies for Score Improvement

The ACT is one of the most consequential tests your child will ever take — and one of the most manageable, with the right preparation. As a veteran college admissions expert who has guided hundreds of families through this process, I’ve watched students transform their scores through focused, strategic work. This complete guide walks you through everything you need to know about the ACT: what’s on it, when to take it, how to prepare effectively, and how to use your child’s scores to their advantage in the college admissions process.

What Is the ACT — and Why Does It Matter?

The ACT is a standardized exam used by colleges and universities across the United States to evaluate applicants’ academic readiness. Alongside the SAT, it is one of the two primary standardized tests accepted by virtually every college in the country.

As one admissions officer once told our team at Great College Advice: “Test scores matter less than you think they do, but more than you want them to.” That sums up the reality of where the ACT fits in the admissions picture. At the most selective schools, a strong score functions as a threshold — a minimum credentialing bar that helps admissions officers sort through thousands of similarly qualified applicants. At many colleges and universities, ACT scores are also directly tied to merit-based financial aid. A few additional points on a composite score can translate into thousands of dollars more in scholarships.

Even as more schools have adopted test-optional policies, the ACT remains a powerful tool for your student. Submitting a strong score — especially one above the 75th percentile of admitted students at a given school — strengthens an application. And for families pursuing merit aid, preparation investment in the ACT can pay off substantially.

Understanding the ACT: Structure, Sections, and Scoring

The ACT Sections

The ACT consists of three required sections along with the optional Science and the seldom done optional Writing component:

• English (35 minutes, 50 questions) — Tests grammar, usage, punctuation, sentence structure, and rhetorical skills.
• Mathematics (50 minutes, 45 questions) — Covers number and quantity, algebra, functions, geometry, and statistics and probability. All questions are multiple choice, and the content extends through pre-calculus. Calculus is not tested.
• Reading (40 minutes, 36 questions) — Assesses reading comprehension across literary narrative, social science, humanities, and natural science passages.
• Science (40 minutes, 40 questions) — This section is now optional. Despite its name, it is primarily a test of data interpretation and reading comprehension using scientific materials — graphs, research summaries, and conflicting viewpoints. Prior science coursework helps, but deep content knowledge is less important than analytical reading ability.
• Writing (40 minutes, 1 prompt, optional) — An essay section that is no longer required by most schools. A handful of programs still require it. If your student has a defined college list, check each school’s current requirements before registering, as policies change frequently.

One important thing to notice about the ACT’s structure: three of the four core sections test reading and verbal intelligence, while only one section is math-focused. As Sarah Farbman, senior admissions consultant at Great College Advice, explains: “If your student is more inclined toward reading and verbal intelligence, they may naturally perform better on the ACT. Students who are more math-oriented may find the SAT — which has a 50/50 math-to-verbal split — a better fit.”

How ACT Scoring Works

The ACT is scored on a scale of 1–36. Each of the four sections (English, Math, Reading, Science) receives a section score between 1 and 36. These section scores are then averaged — not added together — to produce the composite score. This is different from the SAT, where section scores are added.

When your student receives their score report, they’ll see the composite score plus individual section scores, along with percentile rankings that show how their performance compares to other test-takers nationally. The score report also breaks down performance by skill area within each section — this granular data is enormously useful for targeted preparation.

What Is a Good ACT Score?

There is no single “good” ACT score — context is everything. Sarah Farbman identifies three frames of reference families should use to evaluate a score:

1. National benchmarks. A composite of 21 is roughly average nationally. Scores in the high 20s and above place students above average. A 30+ puts a student in approximately the top 5–7% of all test-takers.
2. Your student’s high school context. A 28 at a school where the average is 25 is an impressive result. The same 28 at a school where the average is 30 tells a different story. Colleges do consider high school context, so understanding where your student stands within their own class matters.
3. The target college’s admitted student range. Most colleges publish the “middle 50%” ACT range of their admitted students — the 25th to 75th percentile scores. If your student’s score falls in the 50th percentile and above range, they are competitive. Below it, they may need to consider applying test-optional. Targeting scores at or above the 50th percentile of a school’s admitted students is the goal for most competitive applicants.

The most important frame to internalize: the ACT is a means to an end, not a measure of your student’s intelligence, worth, or future success. It is a tool — one that, used strategically, can open doors. As Sarah puts it: “The ACT does not measure your potential for future success. It measures how good you are at taking this one test.”

ACT vs. SAT: Which Test Should Your Student Take?

Virtually all colleges in the United States accept both the ACT and SAT equally. Neither test is inherently better for admissions purposes — the choice should be based entirely on which test your student performs better on.

The most reliable way to determine this is straightforward: have your student take a full-length practice version of both tests under realistic testing conditions before committing to one. Some test prep companies offer free diagnostic tests specifically for this purpose. Comparing results — using a concordance table to convert scores to a comparable scale if needed — will show which test plays to your student’s strengths.

As a general rule of thumb:

• Students who are stronger readers and verbal thinkers often perform better on the ACT, where three of four sections are reading- and language-based.
• Students with strong math skills may find the SAT advantageous, given its 50/50 math-to-verbal weighting.
• Students who prefer multiple choice throughout may gravitate toward the ACT; the SAT Math section includes student-produced responses where you must calculate and write in your own answer rather than select from choices.

At Great College Advice, we help families work through this decision based on diagnostic data — not guesswork. The goal is to find the test that gives your student the best competitive advantage, not to default to whichever test their friends are taking.

When Should Your Student Take the ACT?

The standard recommended timeline is to take the first official ACT in the winter or early spring of junior year. This timing accomplishes two things: it gives your student enough academic coursework behind them to be fully prepared, and it preserves enough time to retake the test once or twice if scores need improvement before applications are due in the fall of senior year.

A few important planning notes:

• Never treat an official test as practice. A handful of the most selective schools require students to submit all scores from every test taken since 9th grade. Taking an official test unprepared is a risk not worth taking. Use practice tests for diagnostics, and sit for official exams only when your student is genuinely ready.
• Register early. ACT registration deadlines typically fall about a month before the test date. Register at act.org. If you need help navigating registration, a counselor at Great College Advice can assist — reach out at least six weeks before your target test date.
• Some students may test earlier or later. Highly motivated sophomores with strong academic records may benefit from testing earlier. Students who need more time to build core skills may test later. A personalized testing plan, built in consultation with your admissions counselor, is always more effective than following a generic timeline.

How to Prepare for the ACT: A Parent’s Strategy Guide

The single most common mistake families make in ACT preparation is conflating volume of practice with quality of preparation. More practice tests alone will not produce meaningful score gains. The students who improve most dramatically are the ones who prepare with intention.

Sarah Farbman has worked with students across the full score spectrum, and her preparation framework is consistent: “What is required is to take high-quality diagnostic tests, then actually review the mistakes you made — looking for trends and patterns. Sometimes the problem is content knowledge. Sometimes it is test-taking strategy. You have to know which problem you’re solving before you can fix it.”

Step 1: Take a High-Quality Diagnostic Test

Start with an official ACT practice test from the ACT organization itself — available free at act.org. Third-party practice tests vary widely in quality and may not accurately reflect actual test content or difficulty. The most useful diagnostic is one that mirrors what your student will actually see on test day.

Take the practice test in a realistic setting: timed, in a quiet space, without interruptions. Score it using the official answer key and review the detailed score breakdown. This establishes a baseline composite score and identifies which sections and skill areas need the most work.

Step 2: Analyze Mistakes by Category — Not Just by Count

Getting a question wrong matters less than understanding why it was wrong. There are two fundamentally different types of errors on the ACT:

• Content knowledge gaps — Your student didn’t know the grammar rule, the math concept, or the reading strategy required. These require targeted content study.
• Test-taking strategy errors — Your student knew the material but misread the question, ran out of time, second-guessed a correct answer, or fell for a common trap. These require strategic coaching, not content review.

Mixing these up leads to inefficient preparation. A student who keeps missing geometry questions due to time pressure needs pacing practice, not a geometry textbook. A student making consistent comma-placement errors in the English section needs targeted grammar instruction. The score report’s skill-area breakdowns are your map — use them.

Step 3: Choose the Right Preparation Format

Not every student prepares effectively the same way. This is one of the most important insights Sarah Farbman shares with families: “Some students are very self-motivated. They can take a prep book, go into their room, make their own study plan, and stick to it. That is a small minority. Most kids need more support. Whether that support is a study group, a parent, a tutor, a class, or a teacher — it’s important to find the type of support you need and don’t apologize for it.”

Your realistic options for structured ACT preparation include:

• Self-study with official materials. The Real ACT Prep Guide, published by ACT, is the gold standard book resource. Khan Academy does not currently offer ACT-specific prep (its test prep is focused on the SAT), so self-study resources are more limited on the ACT side. Dedicated and self-disciplined students can succeed with this approach.
• Group test prep courses. Companies like Princeton Review, Kaplan, and others offer structured ACT courses with pacing, content instruction, and multiple practice tests. These work well for students who benefit from external accountability and a structured curriculum.
• Private tutoring. One-on-one tutoring is the highest-cost and highest-personalization option. It is particularly effective when a student has very specific, identifiable weak points that can be efficiently targeted. Your Great College Advice counselor can provide tutor recommendations if needed.
• Online prep platforms. Platforms like Magoosh offer self-paced, video-based ACT prep with practice questions and score tracking — a middle ground between full self-study and a live course.

The Great College Advice Family Handbook puts it simply: “Just like getting to Carnegie Hall, the best way to get ready for standardized tests is to practice, practice, practice.” But practice without analysis is incomplete. Build in regular review sessions where your student sits down — ideally with a tutor or counselor — and works through what went wrong and why.

Step 4: Build a Realistic Study Schedule

At minimum, students should complete one practice section every few days in the month leading up to the exam. Ideally, preparation begins two to three months before the first official test date and includes at least three to four full-length practice tests under timed conditions.

A common preparation arc looks like this:

1. Months 3–2 before the test: Diagnostic, error analysis, content instruction on identified weak areas, regular section practice.
2. Month before the test: Two full-length timed practice tests under realistic conditions, with full review after each. Focus shifts from content instruction to pacing, strategy, and mental endurance.
3. Final week: Light review, no new material. Focus on rest, routine, and confidence.

Step 5: Set a Realistic Target Score

Realistic goal-setting is part of effective preparation. A student who improves from a 28 to a 32 through disciplined work has achieved something significant — that improvement deserves full recognition, even if a 36 was never a realistic ceiling. Sarah Farbman is direct about this: “If you study, prepare, and work really hard and your score improves substantially, that is an amazing result. Do not beat yourself up because it is not a perfect score. Think about how much you improved and how that validates all the work you put in.”

Work with your admissions counselor to set a target score that is genuinely meaningful — one that would make your student competitive at the schools on their list. That is the only benchmark that matters.

Superscoring: A Strategic Advantage

Most colleges superscore the ACT — meaning they take the highest section score your student has ever earned across all test dates and combine those bests into a composite score. This policy can meaningfully benefit students who retake the test.

Here’s how it works in practice: if your student takes the ACT twice, earning a 32 in English, a 30 in Reading and a 28 in Math on the first sitting, then a 31 in English, a 31 in Reading and a 30 in Math on the second sitting, a school that superscores will consider a composite built from the 32 English, 31 Reading and 30 Math — giving your student credit for their best performance on each section.

Important caveats:

• Superscoring policies vary by school. Most colleges superscore the ACT, but not all. Check each college’s published policy individually.
• For schools that do superscore, most allow you to self-report these best scores on the Common App or order your superscore directly from your MyACT account to be sent directly to colleges.
• A handful of the most selective schools require applicants to submit every test score from 9th grade onward. At those schools, the “never test unprepared” rule is paramount.

The superscoring dynamic also shapes smart retake strategy. If a student has already maximized one section, future preparation should focus exclusively on the weaker sections — there’s no upside to neglecting what’s already strong.

Should Your Student Submit ACT Scores to Test-Optional Schools?

The growth of test-optional policies has created a genuine strategic question for families: if a college doesn’t require test scores, should your student submit them anyway?

The answer depends entirely on the score. As a general rule:

• Submit if the score is at or above the school’s 50th percentile. A score in the upper range of what admitted students typically present is a genuine asset and should be submitted.
• Evaluate carefully if the score is near the middle 50% range. A score near the typical admitted range neither hurts nor dramatically helps — submission is often neutral and can signal academic engagement, but context matters. Your counselor can help you think through this on a school-by-school basis.
• Consider withholding if the score is below the school’s 50th percentile. At test-optional schools, a below-average score shifts admissions weight toward other application components — GPA, essays, activities, recommendations. Submitting a weak score when you don’t have to adds unnecessary friction to your application.

One more important note: at test-optional schools, not submitting scores means the admissions office will weigh other credentials more heavily. This is not a disadvantage — but it does mean the rest of the application needs to carry more weight. Strong essays, an impressive activity record, and compelling recommendations become even more important.

ACT Accommodations: What Parents of Students with Learning Differences Need to Know

ACT offers testing accommodations to students with documented learning differences, including extended time, additional breaks, and other modifications. If your student has a 504 plan or an IEP in active use, they may be eligible.

Critical logistics to know:

• Accommodation requests should be submitted through your student’s high school — not directly by the family. The school counselor or special education coordinator typically manages this process.
• Although not required, a 504 plan should be in place and actively in use at school before applying for accommodations on the ACT.
• The approval process can take weeks to months. If your student may qualify, begin this process as early as possible — ideally by 9th or 10th grade.

If you have questions about whether your student qualifies or how to start the process, your Great College Advice counselor can point you in the right direction and help coordinate with your school’s guidance office.

The Parent’s Role: Supporting Without Adding Pressure

One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we hear from students is that parental anxiety about testing makes their own anxiety worse. The Great College Advice Family Handbook is direct about this dynamic: if parents become overly tense about the ACT, students will perceive it and internalize that stress.

Your most effective role as a parent is to be a logistics partner and a calm presence, not a performance monitor. Specifically:

• Help build the testing plan. Work with your student and their counselor to choose test dates, registration deadlines, and preparation timelines that realistically fit your family’s schedule.
• Support, don’t dictate, the preparation approach. You know your student. If they need a tutor to stay accountable, advocate for that. If they work better independently, give them the space. The best preparation approach is the one your student will actually stick to.
• Treat test scores as information, not verdicts. Even a disappointing first score is useful data — it tells you exactly where to focus preparation before the next test date. There is time to improve.
• Resist the urge to panic. Testing is one piece of an admissions file. Students with scores below their target ranges are admitted to excellent schools every day. Your support and steady encouragement are more valuable than any score.

As Jamie Berger, veteran college admissions expert at Great College Advice, puts it: focus on the test as a “mountain to be climbed” — a challenge to be tackled strategically, not a measure of your child’s worth or your family’s success.

ACT and Merit Scholarships

For families pursuing merit-based financial aid, ACT score optimization is not optional — it is a financial strategy. At many colleges and universities, scholarship awards are directly keyed to composite ACT scores. A student who improves their composite by just two or three points may cross into a higher scholarship tier, potentially unlocking thousands of additional dollars in aid annually.

Investments in quality ACT preparation — a good tutor, a structured course, time set aside for focused study — should be evaluated against this backdrop. The return on that preparation can be substantial, and merit scholarships do not require demonstrated financial need.

Your Great College Advice counselor can help you understand how ACT scores interact with merit aid at the specific schools on your student’s list, and build a testing strategy that maximizes financial outcomes alongside admissions outcomes.

Score Choice: Which ACT Scores Do You Have to Send?

Both the ACT and SAT use a policy called Score Choice, which gives students control over which test date scores to submit. If your student takes the ACT twice and performs significantly better on one date, you can choose to send only the stronger score to most colleges.

There are two important exceptions:

• Some highly selective schools — a relatively small number — require applicants to send all test scores from every date taken from 9th grade onward. Review each school’s policy carefully.
• At schools that superscore, many allow you to self-report those best score sections as part of the Common App. You will then send in your official test scores upon enrollment. sending multiple score reports can actually be beneficial, since the school will combine your student’s best sections across sittings. In that case, sending all scores is strategically advantageous.

At Great College Advice, we review Score Choice decisions on a school-by-school basis as part of the college list and application strategy process. We’ll help ensure your student’s scores are positioned as favorably as possible at every school on their list.

The Right Mindset About ACT Preparation

The families who navigate ACT preparation most successfully tend to share a few common mindset orientations. We distill these into principles we return to repeatedly with students:

• Self-knowledge. Understanding both how your student performs on tests and how they learn best is the foundation of effective preparation. There is no universal strategy — there is only the strategy that works for your student.
• Growth mindset. Students who have struggled on standardized tests often carry an “I’m not a good test-taker” label. That label is worth discarding. The ACT measures a specific, learnable skill set. Improvement is possible with the right approach — and many students who struggled early go on to significant score gains.
• Realistic goal-setting. Chasing a perfect 36 when a student’s baseline is a 28 is not a preparation plan — it’s a recipe for discouragement. The goal is to achieve a score that serves your student’s admissions and financial aid objectives. Define that target clearly, work toward it deliberately, and celebrate genuine improvement.
• Perspective. The ACT is a tool. It is not a measure of intelligence, character, ambition, or future success. Students who internalize this — and whose parents reinforce it — approach the test with lower anxiety and frequently perform better as a result.

How Great College Advice Supports Families Through the Testing Process

At Great College Advice, standardized testing strategy is an integrated part of the college admissions process — not an afterthought. Our counselors work with families to build personalized testing timelines, choose between the ACT and SAT based on diagnostic data, identify the right preparation approach for each student, and make informed decisions about score submission for every school on the list.

Our team brings over 100 years of combined college admissions experience to every family we work with. When you work with Great College Advice, you’re not hiring one counselor — you’re hiring a team of six veteran advisors who meet weekly, share insights across their clients, and bring deep familiarity with admissions processes at schools across the country and internationally.

Need help for your student’s ACT prep? Book a free consultation with an expert counselor.