Click the link above to see the fully up-to-date second edition of the ACT Prep Black Book for advice on the current version of the ACT, along with over 600 detailed walkthroughs of real ACT questions!
The "ACT Prep Black Book" gives you unique, effective ACT strategies from Mike Barrett, an ACT tutor with clients all over the globe who pay him hundreds of dollars an hour for phone tutoring. The Black Book is a must-have, whether you need to
- make a perfect 36 to be competitive at an Ivy,
- score a 10 in each section to claim a sports scholarship,
- or anything in between.
The Black Book works best when used with the authentic ACT questions in the "Red Book," which is the Real ACT Prep Guide, 3rd Edition, by ACT, Inc. The Black Book shows you how to beat the ACT, while the Red Book gives you real ACT questions to practice with. (The ACT Prep Black Book has no affiliation with ACT, Inc.)
The Black Book and the Red Book are all you need to get your best possible ACT score.
Why is the Black Book the ideal ACT book?
- It actually works, for one thing. You'll learn to use the ACT’s own design flaws against it.
- The Black Book is a clear, concise roadmap to the ACT. (See the partial table of contents below). It explains exactly how every ACT question works, and how to beat it in the least time possible.
- The Black Book contains over 200 original solutions for real ACT questions from the Red Book, so you know it actually works. (You'll need the 3rd edition of the Red Book to use these solutions. But you shouldn’t always trust the Red Book’s own explanations of its questions, believe it or not! As Mike demonstrates repeatedly, the Red Book’s explanations frequently rely on faulty and inconsistent reasoning. Mike shows you what’s really going with the ACT in a way that the Red Book does not.)
Click the "look inside" feature above to browse the Black Book and get a feel for how it approaches the ACT!
A selection from the table of contents:
- . . .
- Getting The Most Out Of The ACT Prep Black Book
- A Note To Concerned Parents
- Frequently Asked Questions
- ...
- The ACT’s Biggest Weakness
- ...
- Timing Issues
- ...
- The General Process For Answering ACT Reading Questions
- Walkthroughs: The ACT Reading Process In Action Against Real Questions
- ...
- Unwritten Test Design Rules Of ACT Math
- ...
- ACT Math Answer-Choice Patterns
- The General Process For Answering ACT Math Questions
- ...
- Walkthroughs: The ACT Math Process In Action Against Real Questions
- ...
- How To Read Passages On The ACT Science Section
- ...
- ACT Science Answer-Choice Patterns
- ...
- Walkthroughs: The ACT Science Process In Action Against Real Questions
- ...
- Commas In The ACT English Section
- ...
- The General Process For Answering ACT English Questions
- ACT English Answer-Choice Patterns And Issues
- Walkthroughs: The ACT English Process In Action Against Real Questions
- ...
- Unwritten Test Design Rules Of The ACT Essay (ACT Writing Test)
- Recommended Step-By-Step Approach To The ACT Essay
- ...
- Analysis Of Sample Essays In The Real ACT Prep Guide, 3rd Edition
- ...
- When Things Go Wrong
- 4 ACT Myths
- Shooting For A 36
- If American English Isn’t Your First Language
- Parting Advice
Click the "look inside" feature above to browse the Black Book and get a feel for how it approaches the ACT!
Mike Barrett has been helping people do better on standardized tests since he was in high school. In college, he worked briefly for Kaplan but left when it became clear to him that the Kaplan method was irreconcilably different from the way he naturally thought about the test. A few months after Mike graduated from college with a degree in linguistics, his younger brothers needed help with the SAT, so he taught them his approach to the test. Word of their success spread throughout their high school, and Mike was soon offering informal SAT tutoring to a few dozen of his brothers' friends. One of those students recommended to Mike that he set up his own SAT preparation company. He thought about that for a couple of weeks and decided to pursue it. Since then, Mike has used a variety of channels to help tens of thousands of students with the SAT, PSAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, ISEE, and SSAT. He regularly travels to work with students all across the United States, and consults with students all over the world through Skype. He speaks at live events as well, and is available for booking. Mike's ACT strategies are so different from the traditional approach because he analyzes standardized tests from the ground up, rather than simply assuming that they cover the material they claim to cover. In other words, most ACT tutors and courses teach the same math, reading, and writing skills that you learn in high school, because they mistakenly assume that the ACT is a test of college readiness. But Mike has looked carefully at large numbers of real ACT questions, and knows that they don't reward the same things that teachers reward in high school and college. According to Mike, ACT questions generally rely on very basic concepts but present them in very strange ways. So students who want to improve their test scores shouldn't waste time re-learning what they've already learned in school - instead, they should learn how the ACT actually works, so they can take their existing knowledge and leverage it into a higher score. And this is exactly what Mike teaches you to do in the ACT Prep Black Book. If you want to understand how the ACT actually works, you need to read this book.
