Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Starting ACT Score: 24E, 26M, 25R, 24S (25 Cum)
Final ACT Score: 34E, 33M, 29R, 30S (32 Cum)
College: Dartmouth
Prior to working with me, Aleeza had taken the SAT and ACT and had not done as well as she would have liked. She felt more comfortable with the ACT and because she also had to take SAT II Subject Tests on the SAT dates coming up, the ACT was the natural choice. I was initially amazed that, despite her low English score on her first ACT, she actually had a great sense for English grammar – this boded very well for her potential on the English section. The problem was that she wasn’t approaching the questions in the right way. Once we fixed that her English score jumped up radically.
The other major issue that she had was with time management. On the Math section that was caused largely by the slightly less than effective ways in which she often approached questions, so once we dealt with that she was able to finish on time without a problem. But like many other students, she had more serious time issues on the Reading and Science sections. We discussed strategies for dealing with the extreme time pressure of those sections, which helped a lot but ultimately she was always pressed for time on those sections.
Partly as a result of this, her first ACT did not go quite as well as it could have. She ran out of time on both Reading and Science and scored considerably lower than she had been scoring on practice tests. But on her very next ACT she was able to manage her time better and achieved a 32 Cumulative. That score was actually still about a point or two below where she had been scoring on practice tests leading into the ACT, but it surpassed her goals and in the end was a fantastic score that she was very happy with.