Introduction 1 About This Book 1 Foolish Assumptions 2 Icons Used in This Book 3 Beyond the Book 3 Where to Go from Here 4 Figuring Out How Long All This Studying Will Take 5 Part 1: Coming to Terms with Reality: An Overview of the ACT 7 Chapter 1: Getting Your ACT Together: ACT 101 9 What to Take to the ACT 10 What Not to Take to the ACT 11 What to Do If You Have Special Circumstances 12 Guessing for Points to Maximize Your Score 12 Your Number''s Up: Scoring on the ACT 13 What the ACT Expects You to Know 13 Repeating the Test for a Better Score 14 Chapter 2: Succeeding on the ACT 17 Surviving the ACT with Four Stress-Busters 17 Inhaling deeply 17 Stretching a little 18 Thinking positive thoughts 18 Practicing POE 18 Avoiding a Few Dumb Mistakes That Can Mess Up Your ACT 18 Losing concentration 19 Panicking over time 19 Messing up on the answer grid 19 Rubbernecking 19 Cheating 20 Worrying about previous sections 20 Worrying about the hard problems 20 Forgetting to double-check 20 Chapter 3: Surviving the College Admissions Process 21 What''s the Main Thing Colleges Look For? 21 How Do Higher ACT Scores Increase My Scholarship Chances? 22 Do Schools Care Whether I Repeat the ACT? 22 What Classes Should I Take in High School? 22 How Helpful Are Sports and Charity? 23 What Should I Say on the College Essay? 23 What Will They Ask Me in the Interview and What Should I Say? 23 How Do I Decide Which School Is Best for Me? 24 What''s the Biggest Mistake Most Students Make in College Planning? 24 How Do I Make My Final Decision? 25 Part 2: Serving Your "Sentence": The English Test 27 Figuring Out What the English Questions Want You to Know 29 Seeing Is Believing: The Test''s Format 30 The passages 30 The question types 30 Their Pain, Your Gain: Looking Out for Traps That Others Fall into 32 Chapter 5: Getting a Grip on Grammar and Usage 35 Reviewing the Parts of Speech 36 Getting in the action with verbs 36 Identifying the culprit with nouns 37 Avoiding repeating yourself with pronouns 37 Defining nouns with adjectives 37 Clarifying the questions with adverbs 37 Joining together with conjunctions and prepositions 38 Piecing Together the Parts of a Sentence 38 Subjects and predicates 38 Phrases and clauses 39 Keeping Track of Punctuation Rules for Every Occasion 39 Periods and question marks 39 Semicolons 40 Colons 40 Commas 40 Dashes 42 Apostrophes 43 Chapter 6: Spotting Usage Errors and Ripping through Rhetorical Questions 45 Spotting Questions That Test Standard English Conventions 45 Properly placing punctuation marks 45 Picking up on pronoun errors 48 Forming possessives 49 Evaluating verbs 50 Calling out sentence fragments 51 Identifying problems with parallelism 51 Recognizing misplaced modifiers 51 Checking for Proper Production of Writing 53 Eliminating superfluous words 53 Completing the mission 54 Determining the function of a deletion 54 Pondering an addition 55 Creating smooth transitions 55 Organizing and positioning elements 56 Seeing the big picture 57 Sticking to appropriate vocabulary and standard expressions 57 Chapter 7: It''s Not What You Say but How You Say It: English Practice Questions 61 Part 3: Don''t Count Yourself Out: The Math Test 67 Chapter 8: Numbers Nuts and Bolts 69 The Wonderful World of Numbers 69 Keeping it real: Types of numbers 70 Lining things up along the number line 71 Understanding absolute value 71 Getting familiar with prime numbers and factorization 71 Minor Surgery: Basic Math Operations 72 Adding and subtracting 72 Multiplying and dividing 72 Working with odds/evens and positives/negatives 73 Focusing on Fractions, Decimals, and Percentages 73 Converting fractions, decimals, and percentages 74 Working with fractions 74 Pondering percentages 76 Eyeing Ratios and Proportions 77 Ratios 77 Proportions 78 Covering Your Bases: Exponents 79 Smooth Operator: Order of Operations 80 Dealing with Average, Median, Mode, and More 80 Doing better than average on averages 80 Weighing in on weighted averages 81 Mastering medians 82 Managing modes 82 Getting ready for range 82 Abracadabra: Elementary Algebra 82 Variables 101 83 Solving simple equations 83 Adding and subtracting expressions 84 Multiplying and dividing expressions 85 Curses! FOILed again 85 Extracting by factoring 86 Solving a system of equations 88 Chapter 9: Getting into Shapes: Geometry and Trig Review 91 Toeing the Line 91 Analyzing Angles 92 Triangle Trauma 94 Classifying triangles 94 Sizing up triangles 95 Zeroing in on similar triangles 96 Figuring out area and perimeter 97 Taking the shortcut: Pythagorean triples and other common side ratios 97 Thanks 4 Nothing: A Quick Look at Quadrilaterals 100 Missing Parrots and Other Polly-Gones (Or Should We Say "Polygons"?) 102 Measuring up polygons 103 Solving for volume 103 Running Around in Circles 104 Trying Your Hand at Trigonometry 109 Introducing trigonometric functions 110 Circumventing the unit circle 112 Measuring in radians 113 Graphing trig functions on a coordinate plane 114 Applying the Law of Sines and Law of Cosines 116 Chapter 10: Algebra and Other Sleeping Aids 119 Suffering Inequalities 119 Using Your Imagination: Complex Numbers 120 Too Hip to Be Square: Roots and Radicals 121 Adding and subtracting radicals 122 Multiplying and dividing radicals 122 Working from the inside out 123 Thinking Exponentially: Logarithms 123 Log rules 124 Natural logarithms 124 Barely Functioning with Functions 124 Taking a Flight on the Coordinate Plane 125 Defining the coordinate plane 125 Knowing which formulas you need to guide your flight 126 Graphing more functions 128 Evaluating graphs of functions 132 Picking Your Way through Percent Increase, Probability, Permutations, and Combinations 134 Managing the ups and downs 134 Practicing probability 135 Calculating outcomes and orderings 137 Setting Up Sequences 140 Managing Matrices 140 Chapter 11: Numb and Number: Acing the Mathematics Test 143 What You See Is What You Get: The Format and Breakdown of the Math Test 143 Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: What Isn''t on the Math Test 144 Getting into the Grind: The Approach 145 Translating English into Math 146 Time Flies When You''re Having Fun: Timing Tips 147 Skim for your favorite questions 147 Backsolve when the answers are actual values 148 Plug in values for variables 149 Kindly refrain from showing off everything you know 150 Put aside two minutes to fill in the remaining ovals 150 Do''s, Don''ts, and Darns: What to Do and Not Do on the Math Test 150 Do get the lead out 150 Don''t start working until you''ve read the entire problem 151 Do reread the problem with your answer inserted 151 Don''t strike out over a difficult question early on 151 Chapter 12: More Fun than a Root Canal: Mathematics Practice Questions 153 Part 4: Time to Read the Riot ACT: The Reading Test 161 Chapter 13: This, Too, Shall Pass(age): Sailing through the Reading Test 163 Facing 40 Questions: The Reading Test 163 Timing 164 Scoring 164 Getting Prepared: Reading Test Strategies 164 Approach passages efficiently 164 Skim the passage effectively 166 Skip a passage if necessary 167 Identifying Reading Question Types and Formats 168 Find key ideas and details 168 Determine craft and structure 170 Integrate knowledge and ideas 171 Approaching Comparative Passages 172 Chapter 14: Where Are SparkNotes When You Need Them? Reading Practice Questions 173 Part 5: Studying Brain Defects in Laboratory Rats: The Science Test 179 Chapter 15: From Frankenstein to Einstein: Excelling on the Science Test 181 Examining the Science Test''s Format 182 Classifying Passage Format 182 Data-representation passages 182 Research summaries 183 Conflicting viewpoints 185 Analyzing Tables, Graphs, and Diagrams 186 Tackling tables 187 Grappling with graphs 187 Dissecting diagrams 188 Examining Experimental Procedures 189 Independent and dependent variables 189 The control 190 Immersing Yourself in Answer Choices 191 Considering Question Types 192 Questions about results 193 Questions about procedure 196 Questions about viewpoints 200 Chapter 16: Faking Atomic Ache Won''t Get You out of This: Science Practice Questions 203 Passage 204 Initial Analysis 206