Here’s a bold claim for you today: the Science section of the ACT is the most “make or break” section of the whole test! It’s “make or break” because often students decide whether to even TAKE the ACT (rather than the SAT or Digital SAT) based primarily on their capabilities in this section. (Unsure which of these three tests will get YOU your highest score? Take my free quiz here and I’ll give you the clearest answer possible!)
I’m a test prep expert with over a dozen years’ experience getting students into their reach schools through giving their ACT and SAT scores a major boost. Over the course of that career, I’ve learned a little-known fact: there ARE ways to hack the ACT Science section, whether or not you’re already a science-head. And in this post, I’m going to let you in on another little-known fact: the “Castle Method,” which I invented, 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 birds-eye sense of how the ACT’s Science section is structured. This, in turn, will help you understand why the Castle Method gives you such a big advantage therein.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. ACT Science section breakdown
2. The Best ACT Science Section Strategy
3. Conclusion
ACT Science section breakdown
The Science section appears as the fourth multiple-choice section on the ACT. This section contains 40 questions that you have only 35 minutes to complete (for a regular time test taker). If we think about it in terms of just numbers, like that, you’re looking at about 52 seconds per question—a dauntingly short amount of time.
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!
How does this all play out in terms of types of questions? In the Science section, you have SIX passages. 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. And ONE passage is a “Fighting Scientist” or “Conflicting Scientific Viewpoints” passage, which has SEVEN questions in it.
So, to sum up, the ACT Science IS DIVVIED UP 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 go into showing you my very favorite method 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 tell you to trust my industry knowledge.) You ready?:
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 unsure which type of passage it is, err on the side of answering the questions FIRST, since you’d do that for five of the six passages, anyway.
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 you’ve got so far is the foundation 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 bread and butter of my method: how to cut through the chaff and get right to the wheat—the right answer.
ACT Science Section Hack: 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, I’m here to tell you that you can get these questions correct without globally understanding 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 sweating over generating the CORRECT answer—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. Et cetera. What a relief!
Running out of Time on 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 best friend invited you to their family’s medieval castle (or, you know, château) in the French countryside for the summer. You’re thrilled to be away from home for a while, and in such a beautiful place. One day, you’ve just wrapped up lunch with your friend, and she says, “Hey ____, would you mind grabbing my glasses 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 right 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 wrote down every word she said, 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 glasses are in the top right 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 kind friend’s glasses are.
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 closed off the possibilities on the first-through-fourth floors, which means you’ve eliminated 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 deep knowledge of past ACT tests to make it very similar to questions on the real exam:
Note: I wanted to use colors in this example so that the distinction 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 pen. 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 glasses are in the top right 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!)
Bingo-bango: 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!
So that, my friends, is my very FAVORITE technique for quickly identifying the correct answers to the majority of ACT Science questions—while ignoring all the irrelevant information that could throw me off and gobble up precious seconds! You’re welcome ;)
If you like practical, concrete 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 binge (or watch) 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 have your mind blown!
