Two students, senior Michael Charleston and sophomore Ishaan Banker, have been recognized for achieving a perfect 36 overall on their recent ACT tests. According to PrepScholar, only 0.22 percent of students in the Class of 2024 scored a 36 on the ACT.
A helpful resource to study, Banker said, is the official books sold by ACT.
“A lot of official ACT prep books are the way to go for [studying]. I think I used like seven,” Banker said.
Charleston said that the study method that worked best for him was practicing with real past ACT questions and working on the skills that he would need to use when testing.
“I found a bunch of previously released exams online, so I just did a bunch of those. It was honestly more about figuring out the timing of the test and testing strategies as opposed to actual content,” Charleston said.
For high scorers still wanting to improve, Banker said that knowing strategies and studying the right types of questions is important in order to gain more points.
“Since like 80 percent of the questions are pretty easy, you can get them off the bat. But then there’s that 20 percent that sets [a score of] 34 between a 36, and those are the question types that ACT tries to emphasize on. So studying those, knowing how ACT tries to test you or trick you in different concepts, that’s the most important thing,” Banker said.
Charleston said that another useful strategy for him was not stressing during the test in order to maintain his focus.
“I felt pretty good about [the test]. I think, if you’re calm while you’re testing, you usually do better, so I was trying to keep that in mind,” Charleston said.