ACT Advantage Review

I recently received a packet of information from ACT Advantage to review. It turns out that this company is a not-for-profit organization that helps younger students prepare for the ACT test so that they can be better prepared for college.

In 8th grade it doesn’t seem possible that you should be thinking about college prepratory tests, but it really is a good time to start looking at and taking some practice tests.

There are two parts to this program. The first part is the “Explore” part where your eighth grade student can take a sample ACT test in each of the four areas of English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science. There are between 28 and 40 questions depending on the subject. Each section only takes 30 minutes.

This gets your child ready for timed tests in various subject areas in a shorter version than the full ACT test. My eighth grade daughter took the test over several days (not sure if I was supposed to do it that way). It gave her a good idea of where she stands in comparison to other students her age.

I felt it was good for her to start looking at taking some tests like this so that she could get a feel for how these tests work and how she did on them.

The second part of the program is the “Plan” section. This test, I believe, is to be taken by a tenth grade student. Both these tests give students and parents a baseline of where their student falls in the mix of students their age and also gives them a way of measuring their progress from the first test to the second.

The Math and English sections of the Plan test are a bit longer than the Explore test. I think this is good to help students realize that the real tests will be longer and more intense and that they need to prepare for them.

The packet also comes with a brochure for each section that helps you understand your child’s results. A College Readiness Standards handbook is included as well and provides ideas for how to prepare for the test if you want to get higher scores.

Both the Plan and Explore sections of this program cost $22.95 each. You get a sample answer sheet so that your student knows just how to fill it out and use it, along with the other booklets mentioned above.

To order any of the ACT Advantage programs you can go to their website at http://www.actadvantage.org/

As a member of the Homeschool Crew, I was given this product to review. I was not paid for this post and do not have to return the product to the vendor.  The opinions expressed in this post are those of the blog owner (me).