Here’s a bold statement for you—but one I feel confident in, given my 14 years in the test prep industry: the most “make or break” section of the ACT is….Science! This section is crucial because often students decide whether they’ll even pursue the ACT (rather than the Digital SAT) based primarily on their capabilities in this section. (Wondering which of these two tests will get YOU your best score? Take my free quiz here and I’ll give you the clearest guidance possible!)
I’m a standardized testing expert who gets high schoolers into their dream colleges by working with them one-on-one to astronomically improve their ACT and SAT scores. Through tutoring hundreds of students (and researching the biz extensively), I’ve learned a little-known fact: there ARE ways to hack the ACT Science section, whether or not you consider yourself to be “naturally good at” Bio, Chem, or Physics. And in this post, I’m going to let you in on another secret: my trademark “Castle Method,” which will help you get through the Science section faster and with more points to your name.
First, though, let’s make sure you’ve got a sound overall grasp of how the ACT’s Science section is laid out. This, in turn, will help you understand why the Castle Method gives you such a big advantage.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. Video version of this article
2. Structure of the ACT Science section
3. The Best ACT Science Section Strategy
4. Conclusion
Video version of this article:
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Structure of the ACT Science section
The Science section is the fourth multiple-choice section on the ACT. This section contains 40 questions that you have 35 minutes to complete (for a regular time test taker). If you break that down, you’re looking at about 52 seconds per question—an intimidatingly brief amount of time, at first glance.
However, the Science section has a crucial difference from the ACT’s English and Math sections. While English and Math questions are ALL independent of one another, Science gives you six- or seven-question clusters that all relate to a specific passage. You need to be able to parse that passage, in a basic way at least, to get the relevant questions correct!
And what about types of questions you’ll get asked about those passages? The Science section has
SIX passages total.
THREE of these passages are “Experiments” passages, which have SEVEN questions each.
TWO of the passages are “Charts and Graphs” passages, which have SIX questions each.
ONE passage is a “Fighting Scientist” or “Conflicting Scientific Viewpoints” passage, about which you’ll be asked SEVEN questions.
So, to review, the ACT Science is broken down like so:
40 questions in 35 minutes
6 passages
3 Experiment passages, with 7 questions each = 21 questions total
2 Charts and Graphs passages, with 6 questions each = 12 questions total
1 Fighting Scientist passage, with 7 questions
The Best ACT Science Section Strategy
Before I explain my very favorite strategy for tackling most ACT Science questions, I need to give you a basic rule to go by. (My one-on-one tutoring clients get a much more detailed explanation of the how’s and why’s behind the method. But for the purposes of this summary, in a free blog post, I’m going to just give you a rule and ask you to trust my industry knowledge.) Here we go:
For the “Fighting Scientist” (AKA “Conflicting Viewpoint”) passage, you should actually read the passage before answering the questions. For ALL of the other passages in this section, JUST START ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS and refer back to actual paragraphs of text ONLY if you can’t determine the answer from the charts, graphs, figures and tables!
And if you’re not certain which type of passage you’re dealing with, err on the side of answering the questions FIRST, since there’s a way slimmer chance that you’re looking at a Fighting Scientists passage.
Can you see how this already has the potential to save you MANY seconds per passage? Seconds that matter highly in such a fast-paced exam?
But we’re not done yet! What we’ve just learned so far are the fundamentals for even BEGINNING to answer all of those 40 questions within the tight timeframe you’re working with (by cutting out the READING part of most of the passages!). Now it’s time for the main meat and potatoes of my method: how to cut through the haystack and get right to the needle—the correct answer.
ACT Science Section Strategy: "Locate" the Answer
Regardless of whether the passage is a “Charts and Graphs” passage or not, there will be many questions in each passage that specifically ask you to interpret a table, graph, figure or chart of some stripe.
However, the good news I want to bring you is that you can get these questions right without understanding overall what’s actually happening in the passage, without critically thinking about how to interpret the data, and without knowing what the science lingo even means.
How can this be true? Well, because instead of pulling your hair out over coming up with the correct answer yourself—which requires a deep understanding of what’s going on in a passage—think of the ACT Science questions as merely asking you to LOCATE the answer.
You don’t have to understand how or why. You don’t need to have learned that lesson about light refraction in Physics class. You merely need to figure out that when the magnet is 10 cm away, there will be a 5-volt current. And so on. Phew!
Moving Too Slowly through the ACT Science Section? Use the Castle Method
So, now we know that your only goal is to “locate” the right bubble for the majority of ACT Science questions, riddle me this: would it be easier to locate a fact starting with the details, or starting from the big picture?
Huh? Don’t worry: here’s an example to illustrate what I mean.
Let’s say your good friend invited you to come vacation at her family’s medieval castle (or, you know, castello) in the Italian countryside for the summer. You’re thrilled to be away from home for a while, and in such a gorgeous place. One day, you’ve just wrapped up breakfast with your friend, and she says, “Hey ____, would you mind grabbing my phone for me while I bring our plates inside?” OBVIOUSLY, you’re going to say “Yes!”
However, she gives directions to you like this: “Great! It’s in the top left drawer of my desk, which is on the right-hand wall of my room, which is the third door on the left, after you turn right from the stairs, on the fifth floor.”
Hmmm….unless you were furiously taking notes while she talked, I’d be VERY impressed if you were able to remember all those instructions. (You might be lost in that castle for a while!)
However, what if she told you the directions this way instead?: “Go to the fifth floor and turn right. Go to the third door on the left side of the hall. My desk is on my right wall, and my phone is in the top left drawer.”
Now, I can’t speak for how your mind works, specifically, but I’ve found that for basically ALL of my students, the second description is easier to understand AND remember. I actually don’t need to even write that down! I can see in my head exactly where I’m going and where my generous friend’s phone is to be found.
So, why was the second set of directions so much easier to understand and follow than the first set? Because it was going from BIG to SMALL details. This allowed you to narrow down the possibilities of where in the castle you needed to go. For example, once you know to go to the fifth floor, you’ve nixed everything on the first-through-fourth floors, which means you save your brain from having to envision and think about dozens of incorrect rooms!
most ACT Science questions SHOULD Be approached the same way. You’re going to work from macro to micro, narrowing and narrowing until the only data point left is your answer!
So, let’s see how this works with a sample Science question. I made up the below question and chart (and the associated lanternfly data), but I’ve used my thorough knowledge of past ACT tests to make it very similar to questions on the real exam:
Note: I’m using colored lines and dots in this example so that the difference between the three lines really pops for you, but the ACT is not printed in color.
Here’s how to use the Castle Method to hack this question as efficiently as possible:
“According to Figure 2” = that’s like your friend telling you to look on the 5th floor…and NOT any other floor! You’re going to locate Figure 2 and actually point to it, with your finger or pencil. No other figure or table in the passage matters. Your answer is HERE or it’s nowhere.
“In New Jersey” = there might be MANY different things that are being measured in the chart, but you’re only going to look at the purple line, which corresponds to “New Jersey” in the key. No other line matters. This is like turning right and finding the third door on the left.
“In 2019” = you’re going to locate the year 2019 on the graph and find where the purple “in New Jersey” line crosses it. This corresponds to your friend’s instruction that “my desk is on the right wall and my phone is in the top left drawer.” Whatever data you find here IS YOUR ANSWER. (And which numbers do you read? Why, the axis on the LEFT that says “Spotted Lanternfly Sightings,” of course!)
Et voilà: following these steps brings you swiftly your answer of C, or 25,000.
I hope it’s clear by now why you don’t need to understand WHAT spotted lanternflies are. You also don’t need to know HOW data on their sightings is being measured, or WHY the graph is changing or WHAT’s even causing it to change. You just need to use the “Castle Method” to go from zoomed-out to zoomed-in…and FIND the answer!
Conclusion
So that, my friends, is the best technique for quickly identifying the correct answers to the majority of ACT Science questions—while ignoring all the irrelevant information that could confuse me and waste precious seconds! You’re welcome ;)
If you like actionable tricks like these that help you quickly maximize your SAT and ACT scores, consider working with me and getting the results that my past students are so happy with!
Are you more of the self-taught sort? I’ve got something for you, too: my online ACT Science course that you can watch (or binge) at your own pace, with ALL my tricks and strategies for the ACT Science section. Check out The Ultimate ACT Science Guide here, and prepare to boost your score!
