Most students preparing for the ACT don’t struggle because they lack intelligence or content knowledge. In my experience teaching ACT prep, students plateau because they prepare for the wrong things. They study the grammar, memorize the formulas, and read through practice passages – but they never build the skills the exam actually rewards under a timed environment. The ACT is equal parts a knowledge exam as it is a “performing under pressure” exam.
Below are three of the most commonly overlooked habits I see students ignore in their ACT prep, but which consistently lead to increased scores.
1) Train Timing Before You “Feel Ready”
Students first turn to study content: going over punctuation rules, drilling angle theorems, reviewing reading strategies. Only when they feel confident do they start practicing under time. The problem is that by waiting, they spend weeks training a skill (accuracy in calm conditions) that does not exist on test day.
Timing is not something you add after you learn content – it is something you train alongside it.
When students begin timed sections early in their prep, they learn quickly where the panic shows up: certain question types, early slowdown points, or fatigue at the end. Without that feedback loop, students spend their study weeks perfecting the wrong behavior.
What this looks like in practice:
- Do one timed section per week starting in Week 1 of prep
- Track not only your raw or scaled score, but where you lost time
- Recognize that imperfect timed work beats perfect untimed work – because only one of those resembles test day conditions!
The ACT does not reward students who know the most; it rewards students who can think under pressure for nearly three hours without losing motivation or composure. You may very well know the answer to a problem, but perhaps you needed a few extra minutes than you have. Practice without those extra minutes.
2) Review Wrong Answers with a Purpose
Ask most students how they review missed questions and they will say, “I checked the answer key.” This is not review, rather, it’s acknowledgement of the correct answers. Real review requires a bit more thought.
Every wrong answer has a reason behind it. Sometimes that reason is content: you forgot how to factor or you misread a comma rule. But often it is cognitive: you rushed, you reread too many times, you overthought a vocabulary word, you didn’t eliminate choices with confidence, or you panicked and guessed through the last six.
A good review answers three questions every time:
- Why did I miss this? (content, timing, or decision-making?)
- What rule or behavior would have prevented it?
- Is this error part of a pattern or a one-time mistake?
Students who do not document the cause of a mistake are much more likely to repeat the same mistake continually. Improvement comes not from doing more questions but from studying fewer questions more intelligently and with more purpose.
3) Practice Recovering From Failure Intentionally
Most students rehearse the scenario where things go well. They imagine the test beginning, they get through questions at a good pace, they feel composed. But that scenario is never the whole test. You will, at some point, hit a question that gives you pause. The students who score well are not the calmest, but they are the most practiced at recovering quickly.
A drill I give my students looks like this:
- Choose one random question to skip without hesitating
- Stop, take a deep breath and practice continuing where you left off
- Do not return to the skipped question until all others are done and only if time remains
This is not about answering more questions correctly at that moment; it is about training your body and brain to treat potential setbacks as neutral events instead of cause for concern.
Closing Thoughts
These three overlooked habits: early timing exposure, strategic review, and practiced recovery have something in common: they target the part of the exam students pretend doesn’t exist. Everyone loves to study the part that feels good. Almost no one trains the part that puts them against a wall. But on a high-stakes, high-speed exam, the psychological piece controls whether the academic knowledge you studied makes it on the page. Again, the ACT does not just test what you know — it tests whether you can show off what you know at speed, under stress, without collapse.
If your score is not moving despite all the hours you’ve put in, it may not mean you need more content. It may mean you are practicing the wrong way. Begin timing earlier than feels comfortable. Treat every wrong answer as a data point, not as a disappointment. And rehearse the moment when things go wrong so it stops being a crisis when it happens.
Students raise scores not by adding more time to prep but by shifting how that time is used. The ACT rewards disciplined process far more than raw intelligence — and overlooked habits can often make the difference.
If you’re looking to increase your ACT scores, try these three tips – and if you need more support, our tutoring team is always happy to help.