What Is the ACT Test?

The ACT test, started by the American College Testing Program (hence the acronym), is a standardized pencil-and-paper test used as a college entrance exam. Colleges and universities use your ACT score, along with your GPA, extracurricular activities, and high school involvement to determine if they’d like you to grace their campus as a freshman. You can take the test a zillion times if you’d like during your junior and senior years, but testing restrictions exist to keep you from having an unfair advantage over students who can’t do the same.

http://testprep.about.com/od/act/a/Basic_ACT_Info.htm

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ACT Math Question Content

What content do you need to know? Brush up your skills on this info you learned from middle school through about 11th grade:

Pre-Algebra
13-14 Questions involving things like

• Factors
• Square roots and approximations
• Absolute value and ordering numbers by value
• Exponents
• Scientific notation

Elementary Algebra
10-11 Questions involving things like

• Exponents and square roots
• Evaluation of algebraic expressions through substitution
• Using variables to express functional relationships
• Algebraic operations
• Factoring and quadratic equations

Intermediate Algebra
9 Questions involving things like

• Quadratic formula
• Rational and radical expressions
• Absolute value equations and inequalities
• Sequences and patterns
• Polynomials
• Complex numbers

Coordinate Geometry:
9 Questions involving things like

• Graphing and the relations between equations and graphs, including points, lines, polynomials, circles, and other curves
• Graphing inequalities
• Slope
• Parallel and perpendicular lines
• Distance; midpoints; and conics

Plane Geometry:
13-14 Questions involving things like

• Angles and relations among perpendicular and parallel lines
• Properties of circles, triangles, rectangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids
• Transformations
• Proof and proof techniques
• Volume
• Three-dimensional Geometry

Trigonometry:
4-5 Questions involving things like

• Trigonometric relations in right triangles
• Values and properties of trigonometric functions
• Graphing trigonometric functions
• Modeling using trigonometric functions
• Solving trigonometric equations

ACT Mathematics Practice

There it is – the ACT Math section in brief. Think you can pass it? Sure you can! Take an ACT Math Practice Quiz to gauge your readiness, then launch into 5 Math Strategies to improve your score. Good luck!