The ACT: Ten Dumb Things You Can Do To Mess Up Your ACT

Buy this book »

Throughout this book, you discover techniques for doing your best on the ACT.  We're sorry to say, however, that there are just as many techniques for messing up big-time on this test.  Take a few minutes to read through them now to see what dumb things people do to blow the exam totally.  By being aware of these castastrophes, you may prevent them from happening to you.

And no - no booby prize is awarded to the student who makes the greatest number of these mistakes.

Losing Concentration

When you're in the middle of an excruciatingly boring reading passage, the worst thing you can do is to let your mind drift off to a more pleasant time (last night's date, last weekend's soccer game, the time that you stole your rival school's mascot and set it on the john in the principal's private bathroom).  Although visualization (picturing yourself doing something relaxing or fun) is a good stress-reduction technique, it stinks when it comes to helping your ACT score.  The ACT is less than five hours of your life.  You've probably had horrible blind dates that lasted longer than tat, and you managed to survive them.  This, too, shall pass.

Panicking Over Time

Every section on the ACT begins with directions a line that tells exactly how many questions are in the section and, therefore, how many minutes you have per question.  It isn't as if this is some big mystery.  You can waste a lot of time and drive yourself crazy if you keep flipping pages ahead, counting up how many more questions you have to do.  You can do what you can do; that's all.  Looking ahead and panicking only waste time and is counterproductive.

Messing Up Numbering on the Answer Grid

Suppose that you decided to postpone doing question number 11, hoping that inspiration will strike. But now you accidentally put the answer to question 12 in the blank for question 11 ... and mess up all the numbers from that point on.  After you answer question 30 and suddenly realize that you just filled in bubble number 29 and have one bubble left  -  aaargh!  Stroke City!  It's easy for me to say, "Don't panic," but chances are that your blood pressure will go sky-high, especially when you eyeball the clock and see that only one minute remains.

If you have a good eraser with you (which is one of the things I suggest that you bring with you), the wrong answers on the answer grid should take only a few seconds to erase.  But how on earth are you going to resolve all those problems and reread and reanswer all the questions?  You're not; you're going to thank your lucky stars that you bought this book and took the following advice: When you choose an answer, circle that answer in your test booklet first and then fill in the answer on the answer grid.  Doing so takes you a mere nanosecond and helps you not only in this panic situation, but also you go back and double-check your work.

Random guesses can't hurt you on the ACT because there is no penalty for wrong answers.  Never leave a bubble blank.  Make a random guess.  Fill in the bubble; then put an arrow in the margin of the test booklet (now on the answer grid) to remind yourself to review that question.  Because you have all the bubbles filled in, you won't make a numbering error like we described earlier.