WELCOME
The ACT is an important part of college admissions. While many schools do not require applicants to
submit either ACT or SAT scores, most require one of them. For a long time, different schools would
accept only one or the other. If you wanted to apply to schools in the Midwest, you took the ACT; if you
wanted to apply to schools on the East or West Coast, you took the SAT.
The good news is that these rules are obsolete. All schools that require a standardized test will take either
the ACT or SAT.
This is good news indeed for test takers. While there are many similarities between the two tests, many
students find they do better on one than the other. The expert advice of The Princeton Review is to take
whichever test whose practice version you do better on. While you can certainly take both, you should
focus your efforts on one for substantive score improvement. True improvement takes hard work, and it
can be tough to become an expert in both. And because schools will take either one, you won’t win any
brownie points for punishing yourself.
Because you bought this book, we assume you’ve already made the decision to boost your ACT score.
This book provides a strategic and efficient way to improve your scores, specifically on the Math and
Science sections. For a more thorough review of content and exhaustive practice, we recommend
purchasing the latest editions of Cracking the ACT and 1,460 ACT Practice Questions.
For more on
admissions, see
The Princeton Review’s
The Best 380 Colleges
or visit our website,
PrincetonReview.com.
FUN FACTS ABOUT THE ACT
The ACT is nothing like the math and science tests you take in school. All of the content review and
strategies we teach in the following lessons are based on the specific structure and format of the ACT.
Before you can beat a test, you have to know how it’s built.
Structure
The ACT is made up of four multiple-choice tests and an optional Writing test.
The five tests are always given in the same order.
