ACT SCIENCE

General Tips & Strats

• When the question mentions a figure or figures or experiment, that means you'll need to
incorporate those into your answer in some way.
• If a question mentions some figure or experiments but not others, likely that you won't need to
use the ones not mentioned. All of this helps you focus like a laser on the key pieces of
information.
• Use other key words in the question to help you determine where to look for the answer. For
example, a term, a measurement, an idea in the question — look for that in the tables or in the
text.
• There is no order of difficulty within a passage except for the last question, which is usually
trickier than the rest. This might affect your question order strategy. I generally like to leave
these until the end of the passage if possible.
• Anytime that you have a question in Reading or Science that is comparative (i.e. more than, less
than, greater than, put things in order from least to greatest, etc.), double check your answer to
make sure you didn't put the OPPOSITE of the correct ordering.
• This is a test that is about sorting through a lot of information and finding what's important, not
a test about understanding absolutely everything! The key skill is discernment: judgment of
what's important to answer a question. That's why we'll go right to the questions so that we
have that filter to use immediately on the figures and text.
• This is a test that thrives on intimidation. The questions, on average, aren't actually that bad.
There's no way you could finish this test in the time provided if they were actually consistently
hard. So don't be intimidated — just dive in and start making sense of things as you go, as
needed. They’re usually easier than you think!

PASSAGE TYPES

2 Data Representation passages (6 questions each) — charts and graphs, some text, typically shorter &
easier specific questions

3 Research Summary passages (7 questions each) — a lot of text, some charts & graphs, many questions
based on information in the text (longer, more complicated). Will mention Study 1, 2, 3 or Experiment 1,
2, etc.

1 Conflicting Viewpoints passage (7 questions) — all text (rarely with figure), will mention Science 1, 2,
3 or Student 1, 2, etc.

Recommended order: DR —> RS —> CV, but this can vary depending on your preferences and strengths
and weaknesses. I'm actually thinking lately that doing CV after DR is a viable strategy. Just figure out
what works for you.

CORE STRATEGY

Do not read the passage or figures. Just go right to the questions.

Do specific questions first -- questions about a single figure or experiment.

Then do questions about more than one figure or experiment.

Then do questions about all experiments or about the passage as a whole (general).

Read what you need when you need — have laser precision.

Skip aggressively when necessary.

I generally like to do questions that are shorter first, if possible (short Qs, short choices). Also like to
delay on the last question for as long as possible, though sometimes it's more natural to do that last
question earlier.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD

What is varied [variables] and what is constant [controls]? (Trends)

Variables:

Independent — actively changed by experimenter to see effect on dependent variable

Dependent — what is measured, changes observed (results of manipulations of independent variable)

Control – trial that does not receive the independent variable. Acts as the “baseline” to compare to the
trials w/ independent variables to see the net effect.

EVALUATING CHOICES Take the choices apart — if you can eliminate two of them first, do so. You don't
have to evaluate the entire choice at once. For example, Yes|No, Greater|Lesser, etc. Also, look at the
explanation — if that is contradicted simply by the data in the passage, you can eliminate, getting you
down to 2 choices in the worse case scenario (even if you didn't understand anything else).