If the school’s ACT classes aren’t cutting it for you, then you might want to look into additional help. The Princeton Review is an ACT test prep course offered by the Princeton Review, which is a company that specializes in preparing students for tests such as the ACT and the SAT.
I recently took the course and found it to be beneficial – mostly. The classes are offered at Southfield High School for $250. The class includes 18 hours of live instruction, two full-length practice tests, small class sizes, an ACT test prep book and 24-hour access to their online ACT resources. This is an excellent discount because the original class costs more than $500, but Southfield Public school students get a discount.
The first class was spent going over strategies that will help students do better on the ACT. Personal Order of Difficulty (POOD), Process of Elimination (POE), and the now, never, later systems are some of the strategies presented.
The two full-length tests are very helpful; they help simulate the real ACT environment. One practice test is given toward the start of the course to evaluate your skills, and another is given toward the end of the course to measure the progress you have made. The tests are very effective in helping gauge your strong and weak points.
The class offers many unique and entertaining ways to help with the English part of the ACT. The English portion covers many of the “forgotten” parts of English that are often overlooked in the regular curriculum, such as all the uses of commas and “wannabe conjunctions.” It also has unique methods like the vertical line test to help determine the proper use of punctuation. All of this coupled with the grammar boot camp and the English practice test makes the English portion the most helpful part of the whole course.
The English portion was preceded by the math portion, which came up short when compared to the cost of the program. My facilitator’s strong point was not math at all; she excelled in English. A seeming lack of familiarity with basic formulas and math skills made her less able to teach that portion of the course effectively. The facilitator was often forced to rely on the prior knowledge of students. The book does contain a helpful type of plug-in process to help solve algebraic equations, but without the proper instruction, the plug-in method was hard to master.
The science portion was OK at best. It didn’t compare with the excellence of the English portion but was much better than the substandard math portion. The science portion focused mostly on reading and interpreting graphs and other data. It also covered basic scientific concepts.
The class structure itself is set up in three-hour blocks with the exception of the two practice test sessions, which are four-hour blocks. The sessions ran from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. The length of the sessions made it hard to stay focused on the material being taught.
The course in its entirety is OK. The price of $250 is a little expensive for what you get. I would recommend the course for students who have English as a weak point and need to improve. But if math is your weak point, I would recommend looking elsewhere for assistance because the Princeton Review course that I took didn’t cut it.