Time management

This section covers several strategies you can use to manage your time more effectively. You’ll learn ways to budget your time and ways to work through questions more efficiently. These strategies help many students, but different approaches work for different people. Practice each one so you can figure out which strategies fit you best.

Time spent per question and per passage

One of the first things to do is set a time goal for each question. Since there are 40 questions and 40 minutes, you can budget 1 minute per question. Because every science passage is different, it’s hard to predict which passage will feel more challenging, so it usually doesn’t help to plan extra time for a specific passage.

You can also track your time by passage. There are typically six passages on the ACT Science test, which works out to about 6.5 minutes per passage. This approach is less reliable because passages can have anywhere from five to seven questions. Also, some tests have seven passages instead of six. In that case, you’d aim for about 5 minutes per passage.

Keep in mind: this only works if you actually monitor your pacing. If you choose to budget time per question or per passage, you must keep track of it yourself.

Skip reading the passages

A common strategy on ACT Science is to start each passage by going straight to the questions. This works because each question points you to a specific part of the passage (a figure, table, or paragraph). By the time you answer all the questions in a passage, you’ll usually have seen the important parts of the passage anyway.

In other words, the questions can guide you through the passage more efficiently than reading the entire passage first.

Annotating

It’s often more useful to annotate the questions than the passage. That way, you make sure you understand what the question is asking before you start searching for information. When you annotate, focus on the following.

Find the key information

Train yourself to spot a few key details in each question. These include location, variables, and keywords.

The location is where the question tells you to look in the passage. This often appears as something like “according to Figure 2…” and is embedded in the question. Finding the location helps you avoid reading more of the passage than you need.

Variables are the quantities the question is asking about. Often, you’ll work with independent and dependent variables. Independent variables are what the scientist changes ($x$-axis), and dependent variables change as a result ($y$-axis). Pay close attention to any numbers given in the question. Also, if the passage includes a graph, watch for axis variables mentioned in the question.

Keywords are words that signal what topic or content matters most. In a chemistry passage, keywords might be chemical names or elements. In an astronomy passage, keywords might be planets or stars. Use the passage topic to predict which terms are likely to matter.

Write the key information next to the question

As you read a question, write down the key information you identified above. Put the location, variables, and keywords next to the question so you can refer to your simplified notes instead of rereading the full question. This is especially helpful for longer questions (4+ lines of text).

The goal is to make it easy to restate the question quickly: what information are you using, and what are you trying to find? Since the wording of a question can be more confusing than the actual task, this keeps you focused on what the question is really asking.

Double-check for question-changing words

At the end of the question, look for all-caps or italicized words like “NOT.” These words can completely change what the question is asking, and missing them is a common reason students get questions wrong.

Practicing time management

Here is a problem that seems difficult mainly because the question is long:

The first sentence is very long and is almost repeated in the second sentence. A useful approach is to shorten it and write the simplified version next to the problem:

From the question, you need to infer why an electromagnet was used to drop the ball instead of a researcher dropping it by hand. Ask yourself: what’s the key difference between releasing a ball from a secured electromagnet versus releasing it from someone’s hand?