Rock Workshop - Week 8

Your Standardized Test Results and

What to Do with Them

How to Read Your Score Sheet

Compare your score to the range of your test on next slide.

Compare your score to the Benchmark on the fourth slide. It will tell you how prepared you are likely to be for college.

Next to that is the percentile which tells you where you rank out of 100 (your percentile means that you scored better than that percentage of the rest of the test takers nationwide – example: if you’re 95th percentile = your score is better than 95% of all kids who took that test).

Composite Score is the average of all four subjects – it’s your overall score.

The rest of the score sheet is the details: how many you got right, wrong and didn’t answer (omit) in each subject, also broken down by type of question.

Slide 2 of 10

Why These Tests Are Important

EXPLORE and Plan are almost exactly the same as the ACT except in length and question difficulty. Same types of questions, worded the same way in the same format. They help predict how you will do on the ACT and let you know where your weaknesses are.

ACT is the most important single test you will take because it is a major part of college admissions criteria. You can use the score sheets to determine how to prepare for the real test.

Based on your score, you can find out if you would likely be accepted into your choice of college and whether you would have a chance at scholarships.

Slide 6 of 10

Things to Look For

Look for trends in types of questions you answered or left blank and see if there is a certain type that you didn’t do well on.

Look to see if you left a bunch blank at the end – you might have gone too slowly to finish all questions (you should never leave questions unanswered on ACT!).

Slide 7 of 10

What Now?

Your teachers will be using this information to gradually include in your classes the same types of information most of you missed.

Make it a goal to review the types of topics you missed (maybe you did poorly on punctuation and sentence structure) and do practice questions (easily found on internet – for example: http://quizlet.com/1022309/college-board-top-100-common-satact-vocabulary-words-flash-cards/- this is a great resource with many of the words you’ll need to know).

Buy a test prep book.

Read as much as possible.

Slide 8 of 10

Reminder!

ACT is NOT the ONLY part of college admissions. Also very important are: GPA Leadership and involvement in extra-curricular

activities Recommendations from faculty Essays

Slide 9 of 10

Testing Secrets

Often just ONE POINT on the test can mean the difference between getting into your college and not, between a scholarship to college and not.

Often just getting one or two more questions correct can mean one or two more points on your score.

60-70% of the test is based on skills that you probably learned (or will learn) in the 8th grade! This means most of what you got wrong is something you forgot rather than don’t know.

Your problem also may not be one of not knowing the content; it could be that you are reading the question wrong or taking too long.

Two best ways to improve score: READ and PRACTICE.

Slide 10 of 10