ACT Math Tips: How to Raise Your Score on the Enhanced ACT
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The enhanced ACT Math section has 45 questions in 50 minutes, each with four answer choices, and a calculator is allowed throughout. To raise your score, learn the core formulas the test does not give you, pace yourself so the harder later questions get enough time, and answer every question, since there is no penalty for guessing.
ACT Math at a glance
| Enhanced ACT Math | |
|---|---|
| Questions | 45 |
| Time | 50 minutes, about 67 seconds per question |
| Answer choices | 4 per question |
| Calculator | Allowed on the whole section |
| Formula sheet | Not provided |
| Wrong-answer penalty | None |
Strategies that work
- Memorise key formulas: area and volume, the Pythagorean theorem, slope, distance and midpoint, and SOH CAH TOA.
- Questions tend to get harder, so move quickly through the early ones to bank time for later.
- Mark and skip a question that takes more than a minute and a half, then come back.
- Plug in the answer choices or pick numbers when the algebra looks messy.
- Never leave a question blank. With four choices, a guess has a one in four chance.
- Practise the topics that appear most: algebra, functions, geometry and basic statistics.
How ACT Math differs from SAT Math
ACT Math covers a little more geometry and trigonometry and gives less time per question than the SAT. The SAT is adaptive and has the built-in Desmos calculator. Students who like fast, direct questions often prefer ACT Math.