At the Krupnick Approach, our job is to neutralize the traps so that you can master the ACT as efficiently as possible.

The Krupnick Approach: Navigating the ACT

Conceived as a “meat and potatoes” alternative to the Scholastic Aptitude Test (now just the “SAT”), the ACT was established in 1959 to ostensibly measure students’ academic knowledge. While it’s arguably failed in that department, the ACT has preserved its 1-36 scoring scale and four-part format, consisting of sections in English, Math, Reading, and Science.

Ultimately, the ACT is far less about knowledge—or critical thinking or even thinking itself–than attention to detail and moving quickly under pressure. The ACT test makers are essentially “evil geniuses” who’ve come together to trap students, psyche them out, and coax them into incorrect answers. This is how they make their living. We make ours by outsmarting them.

The Krupnick Approach to the ACT

At the Krupnick Approach, our job is to neutralize the traps so that you can master the ACT as efficiently as possible. We’ve combed through 26,000 official questions, conducted probability analysis, and navigated through every possible category and answer pattern in existence. In backtesting every ACT official exam question since 1996, we’ve arrived at algorithms, formulas, and rules that have eluded other test prep services because they (i.e. the rules) are buried deeply in the test.

Our test-specific rules and content-related rules are ours and exist nowhere else in the world. Coupled with customized rules that we formulate with students in intensive one-on-one sessions, these rules create opportunities for 7+ point improvements on the ACT as efficiently as possible.

English Section

Composed of 75 questions at a 45-minute hard stop, the English section is, first and foremost, about grammar and punctuation. More specifically, it’s about the specific forms of grammar and punctuation that the ACT deems important. This means you won’t be expected to know the difference between a period and a semicolon but will be expected to know four specific situations in which you can use a comma. It also means 30% of the English section of the ACT will be based on test-specific rules, or magic tricks, which you can automatically answer based on the internal structure of the exam.

Ultimately, if you learn the strategy files we’ve made and how to apply them, there’s nothing that should stop you from acing ACT English.

Math Section

Math is the one section of the ACT that’s actually based on skills you’ve learned in school. With 60 increasingly difficult questions to complete in 60 minutes, your job is to work through problems from numbers & quantity, algebra, geometry, and advanced skills from Algebra II.

Since every math question has two kinds of answers (a right answer and a trap), your goal for Math is to either get the question correct or get it wrong in a way unanticipated by the test makers. The advanced skill questions cover themes ranging from matrices and imaginary numbers to logarithms and conics, but even if you haven’t covered some of these subjects in school, the ACT only expects about a C- level of understanding of advanced skills. Often the hardest questions require relatively little math but involve challenging conceptual moves that aren’t ordinarily taught in standard school math curricula.

Reading Section

The myth about the Reading section of the ACT is that it’s a test of a student’s ability to comprehend and analyze written passages. This isn’t quite untrue inasmuch as reading comprehension skills will benefit you on the ACT, but the more fundamental skill for Reading is learning how to read quickly under enormous time pressure. A 70-minute test the ACT requires you to do in 35 minutes, Reading is a pride-swallowing siege of scanning, parsing, and locating words, synonyms, and ideas in passages in rapid-fire time and then triaging answer choices for traps and correct answers.

Our experts have deciphered algorithms for logical rules and correct answer locations and methods for reading quickly that will benefit you in both speed and accuracy on the ACT. And these skills will help you in college too; when your professor asks you to read 300 pages a week, you’ll know how to distill large amounts of information very effectively and quickly thanks to our work together.

Science Section

The Science section, technically the Science Reasoning section, is ostensibly based on the biology, chemistry, and physics you learned in school, but there’s very little actual science on this test. With only 2-4 questions on science concepts you learned in high school, ACT science tests you on hard-to-pin-down skills like data analysis, chart reading, and the use of the principle of sufficient reason. Which is not to downplay its interdisciplinary rigor by any means, but we’ve discovered content-related rules, procedures, and methods to support even the most apprehensive students to jump 8, 9, and sometimes more than 10 points.

Writing Section

The ACT Writing section is not only optional but entirely unnecessary because colleges do not use it as a criterion in the admissions process. Legend has it that colleges once scrutinized the Writing score–alongside students’ personal statements to spot inconsistencies–but they soon found out that writing scores were more highly correlated with the length of students’ essays than with their quality. Generally, we advise students not to take the Writing (a “Pascal’s Wager” kind of thing), but we have resources to help students with the section should they so desire.

The Structure of the ACT

Section	Standard Time Duration	Number of Questions	Number of Passages	Time Per Question	Time per Passage
English	45 minutes	75 questions	5	36 seconds	9 minutes
Math	60 minutes	60 questions	N/A	60 seconds	N/A
Reading	35 minutes	40 questions	4 passages	52 seconds	8 minutes, 45 seconds
Science	35 minutes	40 questions	6 passages	52 seconds	5 minutes, 50 seconds
Total	2 hours and 55 minutes	215 questions	15 passages	49 seconds	7 minutes and 40 seconds

ACT Test Dates, Registration Deadlines, and Score Release Schedules

When to Take the ACT

Just as they say about voting, the best time to take the ACT/SAT is early and often. This is the case especially inasmuch as these tests do not generally reflect what you learn in school. This means that, with the exception of Math—which does require rudimentary understanding of advanced algebra concepts—there’s really no time that’s too early to start prepping.

With that said, we usually encourage students to begin incorporating ACT/SAT prep into their life routines the summer after sophomore year. The advantage of starting over the summer is that it’s not competing with the full-time jobs of high school and extracurricular activities. The advantage of starting after sophomore year is that students have generally had enough math to get them through 95-98 percent of the ACT/SAT and are by then in a great position to get ahead of the curve. Think of it this way: if you start early, you’ll be done with these tests by junior fall or winter. And while everyone else is still suffering the tortures of the damned, you’ll be able to spend your after school time on something else… like college prep!

The other advantage of starting early is that most colleges (our analysis suggests 65-70 percent) superscore ACT and SAT, which means that having more opportunities to take these exams will likely redound to your credit.

Finally, and the test companies try to keep this off the record, the ACT grants students the right to delete/cancel any/all test scores that would otherwise be on their record. It appears to be part of some kind of first amendment constitutional protection; we’re not quite sure. So if you bomb the ACT you’re first time around, colleges—including the few colleges like Georgetown that require submission of all scores—will not even know you took that exam.

A good score, like curved space time, is relative. It’s relative to your personal standards and relative to the standards of the schools to which you’re applying. (To a certain extent, one might say that good scores are also relative to the standards of your parents and peers, but, as independent thinkers ourselves, we discourage all students from having such narrowly defined conceptions of success.)

More concretely, we encourage our students to aim for outcomes that put them above the 25th percentile for the schools to which they are applying. If you’re dead set on Princeton or MIT, this means that a 33 or a 34 is a good score. If you’re looking at other schools, that 25th percentile might start at 25 or 26. For more information on percentile scores at specific schools, see College Super-Scoring, Test Optional Status & Admissions Data.

If you don’t know where you’re applying, a good rule of thumb is to aim for a percentile that is roughly commensurate with your GPA percentile at your local high school. If you get mostly As and are in the top 10% of your class, you’ll probably want to aim for a 30 or higher. If you’re in the middle of the class, you’d probably benefit from an ACT that’s 25 or higher.

If you don’t know where you stand in relation to your local high school class, we’d suggest looking at Naviance/Scoir/Maya Learning scattergrams and perhaps doing some light reconnaissance during free periods and downtime. Also, it’s usually not terribly difficult to get a ballpark sense based on conversations with friends and classmates.