If you thought it was weird that the ACT contains a Reading section that doesn’t give you enough time to read, you’re going to love the Science section that doesn’t actually test science knowledge! ACT Science is very similar to Reading in that its defining characteristic and primary challenge is its aggressive pace, and doing well in this section means working at speed. First things first, though: the preparation process for the ACT Science section should start with a review of the structure and content, so we’re back at it with a summary of what’s on the ACT Science section.
What is the structure of the ACT Science section?
Just like the Reading section, ACT Science gives students 35 minutes to complete 40 questions, which are divided up among six passages. Passages in this section fall into one of three categories:
- Data Representation (2-3)
- Research Summaries (2-3)
- Conflicting Viewpoints (1)
You can pretty much forget all of those names immediately, though; in fact, sometimes I forget to teach them to my students at all. This is because there’s only one distinction that really matters for most students when it comes to what’s on the ACT Science section: the passages with pictures and the passage without pictures.
The Passages With Pictures
All of the passages in the first two categories (Data Representation and Research Summaries) look more or less the same: a couple of graphs, a chart or two, and maybe a diagram, all interspersed with text giving you additional information about the experiment or study that’s being described. Most if not all of the passages in this group are adapted from actual scientific studies; some are excerpted from academic papers and modified for concision, while others are pulled from science textbooks. Regardless of the source, they deal with real-life science concepts, so it’s likely that you’ll recognize some of the language that’s used.
There are some slight differences between the two passage-types: RS passages will often contain multiple different experiments and questions that focus on comparing them, whereas DR passages tend to ask students to make slightly deeper inferences and draw conclusions from one study. Really, though, you shouldn’t worry about those distinctions—they won’t come into play until you’ve already mastered the fundamentals in this section, and for most students they never truly end up mattering at all.
In fact, as we’ll explore in more depth in our ACT Science strategy overview, the ideal default approach for both DR and RS passages is pretty much exactly the same, which is why we group them into one big happy family. The only passage-type that actually breaks the mold is…
The Passage Without Pictures
Also called the Conflicting Viewpoints passage, this portion of the ACT Science section is generally easy to identify: it’s the passage that doesn’t have charts, graphs, tables, etc. Instead, it’s filled with words, words, and more words.
Thankfully, all that text will at least be organized in a consistent way. The first paragraph or two will introduce a scientific concept and give some underlying facts and information about it. Then, the remainder of the passage will be organized into two or more perspectives—usually opinions being put forth by scientists or students—which will propose explanations for some aspect of the scientific phenomenon at hand. The questions will ask you to respond from the perspective of one of the viewpoints or to compare multiple viewpoints.
Because the CV passage is so noticeably and substantively different from the others, it requires a different strategy; that’s also why it gets its own category. Not to worry, though—we’ll go into more detail about how to approach this passage-type in our overview of ACT Science section strategy.
What kind of science is on the ACT Science section?
Many of my students are curious about exactly what kind of science material is tested on ACT Science, since most people have those one or two chapters in Biology or Chemistry that they never quite got down.
I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that what’s on the ACT Science section in terms of content is very diverse and wide-ranging. The kinds of science covered on the ACT Science section include biology, chemistry, physics, genetics, astronomy… pretty much everything that you might have encountered since 8th grade or so is fair game.
The good news is that only 4-5 questions in a given Science section will require you to actually know any of that stuff. For the most part, the questions in this section test fundamental chart- and graph-reading skills; data analysis; and, above all, time management. I’ve tutored this test for almost 10 years now, and there are multiple Science passages (which I’ve gone over with students probably hundreds of times in total) where I still don’t know what an acronym stands for or what a particular term means. Why? Because it just doesn’t matter.
You can get a really strong score in the ACT Science section while being comfortable with relatively little of the kind of science material that shows up, so long as you approach it the right way. And in my next post, I’ll take you through the basics of how to do just that.
How do I get better at ACT Science?
That’s a wrap for our overview of what’s on ACT Science in terms of structure and content, but that doesn’t necessarily answer the other question that many students have: how do you get better at ACT Science? As I alluded to above, the most challenging aspect of the ACT Science section isn’t what’s on it, because the content doesn’t matter all that much. Instead, the primary obstacle for most students is handling the aggressive pace and the inconsistent structure. To accomplish that and get better at ACT Science, you have to learn the best strategies & techniques and practice them consistently, and we know some people who can help. Head over to GoTutor’s ACT headquarters to explore our prep options—our squad of test gurus would love to help you crush the ACT.