1. Prepping for test day

2. To maximize your prep: Know your weak areas:
By section
By question type
Determine the impact of fatigue on performance
Do full, timed practice tests
Barring that, do full, timed practice sections

3. To maximize your prep:
Practice multiple techniques to determine their effect on your performance
After each practice set, don’t just score yourself!
Do a self-assessment every time to determine what you need to work on

4. More than a month out: Work on skills that take longer to develop:
Vocabulary building
Increasing reading speed
Increasing essay length
Work on strategies in weak areas
The course site will remain up until SAMS 2018

5. a month out: Work on strategies in strong areas
You’re unlikely to make a lot of progress on your weak areas if you’re only starting at this point
You can, however, avoid leaving “gettable” points on the table during this period
Make sure you know your calculator!
You can save time and increase accuracy if you know how to graph systems, do combinations/permutations, and so on

6. a week out:
Do not cram
Focus on making sure you have reliable recall of key items (quadratic formula, semicolon rules, etc.)
Maintain good sleep patterns
Don’t alter your patterns too much during this period (unless they are truly self-sabotaging – overwatch til 4AM, etc.)

7. The day before: No studying, yes relaxing
Limit screen time, especially before bed
Know your route to the test center
Carbo-load
Put gas in the car/make sure you have bus fare

8. The day before: gather materials
Admission ticket
Batteries
Photo id
Snacks
Pencils (not Mech)
Water
eraser
Legal watch
Calculator
layers

9. The morning of: Get up earlier than you need to Eat a good breakfast
protein is important
Do not over-caffeinate
Read something during breakfast

10. During the exam: overall
Ok to skip, but Don't leave anything blank at the end
use process of elimination as a secondary strategy
Pace yourself – don’t sink time into any one question
Trust yourself – don’t 2nd guess (unless you actually missed something)
Watch your bubbling
Use any extra time wisely

11. During the exam: reading
Remember your hands-on reading technique
Fading in the middle of the passage? Two options:
Press on, but don’t re-read until you get to the questions
Stop, take 30 seconds to re-center & breathe, then dive back in
If using P.O.E., look for the wrong answer types

12. During the exam: WALU/English
Read enough to answer the question
Remember the quick brown fox
Watch for parenthetical and idiomatic pairs
For order questions, remember to connect the sentences before and after

13. During the exam: math
Break longer problems down and Underline key parts
If you don’t know what to do, do what you can
Make sure you are answering the question being asked
Remember the Order of difficulty
Every question is worth the same
If you don't know how to do a question, skip it until later

14. During the exam: act science
Read the passage quickly
Read the charts and graphs carefully
All trends will continue when you extrapolate

15. During the exam: essay Take time to plan, then stick to it
Be detailed, be concrete – remember your dim friend
Write quickly but legibly
Save time for proofreading

16. After the exam: Relax! Reward yourself!
Spring for the question-and-answer service to see exactly how you did