Last Monday night, I left KHS at 9 p.m. feeling victorious. Why, one may ask, was I at school so depressingly late? And why, one may ponder, was I feeling triumphant? One acronym is my answer: ACT.

For six weeks I spent every Monday night and every other Saturday morning devoting my time to an ACT preparatory class given by Princeton Review. Thirty hours, in fact, was devoted to this class.

I’ll admit, even though I dreaded the time when I had to shove my backpack full of ACT textbooks, the class was beneficial. It taught me shortcuts and strategies, but more importantly it taught me how to take this test.

The ACT is a nationwide test that is designed to test student’s knowledge in mathematics, English, science, reading, and depending on the student’s choice, writing. According to actstudent.org, the ACT consists of 215 multiple choice questions and takes about three and a half hours without the writing portion. Most importantly, this is the test score a majority of colleges look at to determine acceptance for a student.

However, I learned in my class that the creators of this important test make the test so complicated to make it so one won’t finish any section. Fortunately for me, I learned how to.
Some of the tips include:

– Do not read any of the science portion, just read the questions and find the answer from either the chart or graph.
– In the reading section, first read the questions and circle and star key words. Then go back to the text and only read the first and last sentence in every paragraph.
– For the math section, if you don’t have to use algebra then don’t. It will save a tremendous amount of time.
– In the English section, many questions will try to confuse the student by asking the opposite of what is expected. Therefore, read the questions very carefully.

Even though I believe the test is unnecessary, I know I have to take it and get a great score for college. Therefore, I have unfortunately devoted too many hours to this nationwide exam, hoping all of my blood, sweat and eraser shavings will be worth it.