How to choose the right ACT materials?

SSAT – Are you looking for ACT material but don’t know where to start? Through this article, we will show you how to choose the right ACT materials suitable for each individual’s level. 

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With the goal of helping students choose the best ACT prep materials to achieve their goals, we’ve divided the books into three categories: Must-Have ACT Materials, Best Practice Materials, and Best Materials for each ACT section.

Must-have ACT Materials:

The Official ACT Prep Guide (or the “Red Book”)

Price: $40

Why is this book a must-have, you say? Because this is a book compiled by people who have studied and taken the ACT, this means that the practice questions in the book are the best representations of what you’ll see on the test.

Pros: 

• Has the best practice examples because they are real ACT questions, which means the content will match what you’ll see on the test.
• Includes six practice tests, all of which were previously administered official tests. There are also more than 400 online questions that you can access using the code you received from purchasing the book

Cons:

• It’s not the most thorough when it comes to reviewing concepts or improving knowledge. Furthermore, The Red Book is ineffective in providing students with test-taking strategies.
• Another weakness is the convoluted answer explanation, as all of the answers could be better explained. 
• Because this book has not been updated for a long time but the ACT test structure is gradually increasing in difficulty year by year. Hence, some of the exercises do not reflect those changes properly.

For more: How to improve ACT score?

Best ACT Practice Materials:

Barron’s ACT Premium Study Guide 

Price: $21 for book, $14 for digital

or

Princeton Review’s Premium ACT Prep

Price: $17

If you’re looking for a great deal of content, strategies, and practice questions, all wrapped up in one ACT prep book, then Barron’s ACT Premium Study Guide or Princeton Review’s Premium ACT Prep is the best choice.

Pros: 

• Provide students with detailed analysis for each topic
• Provide students with test-taking strategies, skills and concepts, exercise types, as well as practice questions.
• Provide a “diagnostic test” to measure students’ initial academic level 

Cons: 

• The practice questions are often much more difficult than that of the real ACT test
• With a heavy load of content, students can easily feel overwhelmed. In addition to that, it will be time-consuming to break up all of the content and bring out the full potential of Barron’s and Princeton’s

For more: Math in English

What we have listed until now are ACT general test prep materials, the next part we will share with you about how to choose the right ACT materials for each section in the ACT exam.

Best ACT Math Materials:

Ultimate Guide to the Math ACT

Price: $25 for book, $5 for digital

Pros:

• Provides clear, detailed, and thorough explanations of each ACT Math topic
• Break the main topics into smaller topics to help students understand the key content more effectively
• It covers everything you need to know and doesn’t go beyond the concepts that will appear in the ACT

Cons:

• The explanation for each problem is not thorough, so it is often confusing for many students
• Does not help students differentiate the difficulty levels of different ACT Math topics

Best ACT English and Reading Materials:

Erica Meltzer’s The Complete Guide to ACT English 

Price: about $30

And

The Complete Guide to ACT Reading

Price: about $29

Pros:

• Both the reading passages and practice questions are of high quality and highly realistic on the ACT exam
• Provides exercises to hone literary skills, as well as reveals some tips for reading comprehension.

Cons:

• The price is quite high, equal to large general studying materials even though it is only a test prep book for one section of the ACT test
• The content is quite dry, the fonts are small and the design is not aesthetically pleasing.

For more: ACT exam preparation process

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