I was scoring around a 1350 on the SAT, got a 33 on my first attempt of the ACT.

I’ve always said ACT has questions with clearer answers (“easier” questions) and less time, whereas the SAT is a little more nuanced (“harder” questions) with more time.

Something that I thought the SAT prepared me well for was the reading and writing section. I find SAT reading and writing challenging, but on the ACT, it was all direct with no “difficult” passages.

There was a passage about climate change and the options for a question about adding a new sentence after a sentence saying something like “climate change has been recognized since 1988 in the United States, and the problem has not improved” were:

A.) In the year 1988, Ronald Reagan was president.

B.) The US is surrounded by both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

C.) The United states should begin taking action against climate change.

D.) There are many plant and animal species native to North America.

Okay, without context that isn’t as easy as it was on the test, but it seems to be very clear. Also, math questions were direct, but then they’d do something funky with the answer. I had a question where the answer was 10! and the correct option was 10(9!), so that was interesting.

Science was a breeze. Maybe read two practice problems before going into it? You won’t need more than that. Also, make sure you can do problems quickly because there are much stricter time constraints.