Jane, from the North Bay outside San Francisco, needed a 33 for Notre Dame’s Early Action deadline on November 1. She was at a 28. She’d scored a 27 on her first ACT without any prep, then gained a point after a few tutoring sessions.
On that second test she scored a 26 in English, a 27 in Math and a 30 in Reading. In English she ran out of time and left about seven questions blank.
Rushing was costing her the easy questions
In her first weeks of Reading practice, her coach, Andrew, noticed a pattern. Jane was getting the hard questions right, the ones about what a whole passage means, and missing easier ones that ask about a single detail. When they went back over those detail questions together at a slower pace, she got them right.
So Andrew took the clock away. Her next two Reading practice tests were untimed, so she could build a careful process without the pressure, while still tracking how long each one took. He also changed how she read. Instead of a one- or two-minute skim, she took four to five minutes per passage, underlining as she went, and she saved the hardest passage types for last. By mid-August her Reading practice had gone from seven or more mistakes per test to between one and three.
English showed the same pattern. Most of her mistakes were small slips, like a verb that didn’t agree with its subject, and they came from going too fast. She started rereading each sentence with her answer in it before moving on.
Fitting it around senior year
Jane surfs and played lacrosse, and senior year started in mid-August. She moved her ACT work to the mornings before school, in place of her usual gym session, which also matched the time of day she’d be taking the test.
Math needed rebuilding, because her algebra and geometry foundations were weak. By mid-September her mistakes on a Math practice section had dropped from 15 to 8.
September
Jane scored a 33 on September 19, with English 34, Math 30 and Reading 34. Her English went up eight points. In the Math section, she ran into a problem almost identical to one she’d practiced the day before.
The 33 was the number she needed, and she reached it on her first test with Andrew, six weeks before the Notre Dame deadline.
What we did differently
- Took the timer away for her first two Reading practice tests, so she could build a careful process before working on speed.
- Slowed her skim of each Reading passage to four or five minutes and had her save the hardest passage types for last.
- Had her reread each English sentence with her answer in place before moving on, to catch the small errors rushing caused.
- Moved her ACT work to mornings before school, the same time of day she'd be taking the test.
Coached by
Andrew
Every Boosted Brains coach has a perfect or near-perfect ACT score and has been personally trained by Carson Weekley (perfect 36) and Martin (Head of Student Success).