Best ACT Prep Books - Read these ACT Prep Book Reviews and Pick the Best Book for You

Best ACT Prep Books: How to Find the Right One If you’re planning on taking the ACT and are currently drowning in the depths of Amazon searches for ACT prep books, maybe you’re getting a little paranoid: Should I trust this 5-star review from KelseyKaplan2018? Just because it’s at the top of the search results, does that mean it’s REALLY the best? We get it. Not all test prep books are created equal, and it can be really difficult to figure out which one is the best for you. This is truer now more than ever, as various versions of books become available on Kindle and prices continue to drop. You may be able to buy more books nowbut more isnt necessarily better! So here are our EXPERT opinions on which ones are worth your time and money. Here you will find a clear and comprehensive look at the best books for the ACT. We grade each book on its strategy advice (does it provides good recommendations for approaching ACT test questions?), the quality of its practice questions and tests (how close are they to the actual ACT?), and its style (is it readable and, dare we say, enjoyable)? Lets start out with a quick overview of the books and their quality before getting into greater detail with in-depth reviews below. Best ACT Books of 2018 2019 RankingGradeTitlePublisherYearPrice* 1 A+ACT Prep by MagooshMagoosh 2018$19.99 2A-The Official ACT Prep Guide 2018-2019ACT (through Wiley)2018$2$28. version of the book, 10 ACT Practice Tests. Practice Materials McGraw-Hills ACT 2017 offers 3 print practice tests (they used to offer a link to four more online tests, but thats no longer the case. Theyve replaced this with a bonus app to plan your study: not nearly as useful, but not entirely useless). Theres also a diagnostic test at the beginning of the book, and a set of additional practice questions for every section. So you get a lot of ACT practice with this book. But how good is the practice in this current edition? ACT English ACT 2018 hasnt really fixed its past mistakes with ACT English passage length. The passages in ACT 2018 are up in the . Now the correct answers are obviously correct, and the wrong ones are clearly wrong, as it should be. On the other hand, McGraw-Hill may have overcorrected just a tad; the current English questions, particularly on the diagnostic, are slightly easier than youll see on an actual ACT. ACT Math In ACT 2018, the quality of ACT Math is no different than it was back in the 10 ACT Practice Tests book from a few years ago. This means that McGraw-Hills Math has the right range of question types: pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. Unfortunately, this also means that the math in McGraw-Hills ACT 2018 is easier than the ACT Math youll deal with when you take these test. The most complicated math question types from the real exam dont appear in ACT 2018, and there are a few too many pre-algebra and elementary algebra questions. ACT Reading Once more, McGraw-Hill has worked to address some, but not all, of their past problems. The Reading passages in McGraw-Hills ACT 2018 remain shorter than they should be (600-700 words instead of 700-900which they clearly realize, as the book itself tells you the official passage lengths!). To be fair, one or two practice passages are of the correct length, but others, particularly on the tests, are still too short. And the reading level is still too hard. McGraw-Hills fiction passages are full of dense detail instead of the dialogue and action. And the non-fiction passages are still over-packed with information. On the other hand, you wont see any more incorrect answers that are confusingly close to being right. In fact, it now seems as if McGraw-Hill is overcompensating for this past mistake. A small handful of their ACT Reading practice questions now have answers that are a little too obviously wrong. But this is a minimal quibble overall, ACT 2017s Reading practice questions are more ACT-like than ever. ACT Science McGraw-Hill hasnt changed their approach to ACT Science since they put out 10 ACT Practice Tests. But they havent needed to change their approach, since it was near-perfect to begin with. In ACT 2018, McGraw-Hill continues to excel in this section of the ACT. The books ACT science passages are spot-on, with passages and questions that come very close to the real thingabout as close as you can expect from a third-party ACT prep book. ACT Writing McGraw-Hill gets the format for the ACT essay mostly right, with some minor flaws. The introductory paragraph in the essay prompt is the right length, but the three opinions in each writing prompt are about twice as long as they should be. Bear this in mind if you practice ACT Writing with this book. The guidance for the ACT essay is also inadequate, given the complexities of the updated task. Answer Explanations Im sorry to say McGraw-Hills answer explanations for the ACT remain as insufficient as ever. Saying an answer is right because its the best or that an answer is wrong because it doesnt work is not really helpful. The explanations are short and address actual academic principles minimally or not at all. Skills and Strategy The Good In their ACT 2018 book, McGraw Hill has some really nice skills building practice materials for English, Math, Reading, and Science. Theres some basic advice throughout their chapters on skills and strategy too, but certain strategies are not going to work for everyone, such as speed reading, or are too obvious to be of much help (Listen to your brain?!). However, McGraw-Hill has especially good advice for pacing and multiple-choice strategy. The Bad Sometimes the activities are too short, and equal attention is not given to each section and skill. The chapter on ACT Science prep is shorter than the other chapters. And theres too much focus on easier ACT math skills like elementary algebra. Harder aspects of ACT Math such as logarithms and trigonometry are barely explainedand when the Math chapter is about three times as long as any of the other chapters, youd definitely expect more thorough coverage! And the Writing chapter is woefully inadequate for the more complex new ACT essay. Overall, the advice portions of this book are written in a confusing, inconsistent way. One section labeled Psychology of Testing simply discusses the importance of practice, without really looking at learning psychology. Sections labeled strategy are not always clearly about strategy. Some of the approaches McGraw-Hill encourages may or may not be necessary or useful to all students. Be sure to pick through McGraw-Hills advice selectively, using only what you need, and ignoring the stuff that doesnt make sense. ACT 2018 (McGraw-Hill Education): Grade Practice materials (ACT Science): A Practice materials (everything else): C- Answer Explanations: D- Skills and Strategy: C- McGraw-Hill 10 ACT Practice Tests, 5th Edition There are some things I really like in about McGraw-Hills 10 ACT Practice Tests, 5th Edition. But theres also a lot to dislike. McGraw-Hills ability to replicate truly ACT-like practice varies a good deal, depending on the section of the exam youre dealing with. And their answer explanations leave much to be desired. Quality of the Practice Material ACT English Lets look at passage length. On the real exam, ACT English passages are generally 300-350 words long. In McGraw-Hill, the passages are noticeably longer, ranging from 400-500 words. This makes McGraw-Hills mock ACT English sections more challenging, and harder to complete within the time limit. As for the questions themselves, youll see a handful of questions where the wrong answer is too tempting. You might see two choices of punctuation or wording that both might work, depending on which ideas the author wants to emphasize. And the question sets are grammar-happy, hammering away at grammar, grammar, grammar. On the real ACT, grammar and usage questions take up 20% of ACT English at most. But in this book, grammar takes up at least 30%-40% of the questions, edging out other important quesiton types. ACT Reading In the Reading sections of McGraw-Hills ACT practice tests, the passages are too short rather than being too long. The 10 ACT practice tests feature reading passages that are 600-700 words long, rather than the standard 750. While shorter, these passages, are also harder to read. The prose fiction has a lot less dialog and action, and the nonfiction passages can be poorly written, repetitive, dull, and densely packed with information in a way thats not truly ACT-like. Next, lets look at the quality of the actual Reading questions. As we saw in this books ACT English sections, a handful of wrong answer choices that could plausibly be correcttwo possible main ideas, to inferences that both seem reasonable, and so on. In addition, there are a few too many trick questions. On the real ACT, youll get just a few questions that try to trick you into misinterpreting the keywords from the passage. Youll get a lot more of this extra-hard question type on McGraw-Hills 10 ACT Reading sections. ACT Math In the 5th edition of McGraw-Hills 10 ACT Practice Tests, the ACT Math section has a balance of questions thats pretty close to the real ACT. However, the mix of questions favors pre-Algebra and Elementary algebra, moreso than the real exam. And overall, the math practice questions in this book are easier than theyd be on the real ACT. The handful of really advanced math questions you see in the Official ACT Prep Guide simply dont appear in these McGraw Hill practice tests. Still, all the basic skills and question types are there. ACT Science OK, so Ive been pretty critical of McGraw-Hill so far. But the tone of this review is about to change. The ACT Science sections in McGraw-Hills 10 ACT Practice Tests are amazing! The passages and questions are very close to the real thing. The question sets are pretty much perfect, but I have one minor nitpick about McGraw-Hills ACT Science passages here. The introductory explanations for each passage are shorter than theyd be on the actual exam. Overall though, both the texts and questions offer stellar ACT Science prep. ACT Writing The ACT Writing in McGraw Hills 10 ACT Practice tests was totally useless last year, before theyd updated these sections to match the new essay format. Now, the Writing content in the 10 practice tests is pretty solid. Quality of the Answer Explanations Here, McGraw-Hill falls really flat with their 10 practice tests. The answer explanations are maddeningly inconsistent and unhelpful. Some answer explanations simply say something like Answer X is correct because its the only answer that makes sense. Not useful! Other answer explanations give a little bit of extra information on why an answer is correct, but they usually just reference a concept, without really explaining it. For example, an answer explanation might say This answer is correct because it follows the rules for quadratics. But what does that actually mean? Moreover, at least half the time, the incorrect answers arent addressed at all. Grade ACT English and ACT Reading Practice: C ACT Math Practice: B- ACT Science Practice: A Answer Explanations: D- Princeton Reviews Cracking the ACT Premium, 2018 Edition As I prepared my review of Princeton Reviews Cracking the ACT Premium 2018, I felt like I was playing an exceptionally hard game of spot the differences, or perhaps seeing double (or triple). Allow me to explain. I wanted to compare this book to last years edition, since we already have a review of Princeton Reviews Cracking the ACT 2015 on the Magoosh HS Blog and Cracking the ACT 2016-2017. And making a real comparison proved difficult. When I compared the old editions and the new side by side, I saw that Princeton Review has changed their content very little in the new edition. Perhaps most aggravatingly, Princeton Review made some very superficial changes for no clear reason. In the first few chapters, PR changed the layout and word count of a few pages, without actually changing any content. As a result, the page numbers of the content that followed would be off. If you just compare individual pages, this creates the illusion that the new book contains a lot of changes from the 2015 version. It doesnt. And this slight adjustment seems suspiciously like a marketing ploy. Having said that, there are a handful of small-but-significant changes in this years version of Cracking the ACT. Are they worth paying for? Read on and decide for yourself. What Has Changed Since 2016 In Chapter 19 of the book (Advanced Reading Skillspreviously Chapter 18), Princeton Review has added 6 pages of extra material about dual reading passages in ACT Reading. This new supplement includes a strategy tutorial for dual reading passages and question sets on the ACT. Theres also an example dual passage Humanities reading, complete with practice questions. This new content has the same strengths and weaknesses as the reading materials that appear in both the 2015 and 2016 books. Also, note that while the book promises eight full-length practice tests, four of those are online (and some students report trouble accessing them). The ACT Reading advice is pretty good, although the text is heavily stamped with Princeton Reviews branding in the form of specialized terms and acronyms. (The awful acronym POOD is back with a vengeance!) The passage itself thankfully has no Princeton Review buzzwords, and is comparable enough to a real ACT test. Butjust like previous years editionsthe added ACT Reading practice questions themselves are abysmally not ACT-like. Most of the new dual passage questions are far too easy, and the hard questions are only hard because the answer choices are ambiguous. Supposedly wrong answers could be right. On the real ACT, there are no gray area possibly right answers like this. Cracking the ACTs advice on the new ACT essay is good in some respects. However, once again some branding creeps in. PR gives a pretty strict template for writing the essay, specifying phrases, the structure of individual paragraphs, and the order of content. This Princeton Review method for this essay isnt bad per se. But it may not work for everyone. Lighter guidance that helps students find their own voice and style would be more helpful. There are a few other flaws in the ACT Writing advice. The sample ACT Writing prompts in Cracking the ACT are slightly more complicated than real ACT Writing prompts, with more complex perspectives. One good update this year is that the Princeton Review has made some steps towards covering prewriting, a step it previously ignored. What has Stayed the Same Since 2016 Almost everything else is unchanged. With the exception of the extra pages on dual passages and the full ACT Writing update, the rest of the content is very similar. The quality of the practice materials in the book remain somewhat poor. The answer explanations and strategy tips reproduced from the 2015 edition continue to be a mixed bag. For full details on the rest of this books unoriginal material, see Kristins review of last years edition. Grade Practice material: C- Answer explanations, Strategies and Skills: B- Kaplans ACT Prep Plus 2018 Okay, so Kaplan has rebranded: this is actually the 2018 version of the Kaplan ACT Premier bookwe could even say its a (slight) upgrade. The greatest strength of Kaplan ACT Prep Plus 2018 is its overall structure. It lays out ACT content, question types, skills, and strategies in a compelte and straightforward way. By the end of it, youll have a very good idea of what the ACT is all about. This isnt to say that Kaplan ACT is perfect. There are strong points and weak points within the books largely-good framework. Answer Explanations, Strategies, and Skills Answer Explanations The answer explanations in Kaplans ACT Prep Plus 2018 are refreshing in many ways. Unlike many ACT books, this book explains both the right answers and the wrong answers! Knowing why the wrong answers are wrongand how the makers of the ACT are trying to distract youis a really important aspect of test strategy. Previous versions of this book (okay, the Kaplan ACT book) had sometimes-insufficient answers and explanations. For the most part, Kaplan seems to have corrected this in 2018, though a handful of the wrong answer choices could use more elaboration (unnecessarily wordy is, ironically, too short to truly explain the problem with the answer choice)! Strategies and Skills The strategy and skill portions of the book definitely dont have a problem with incompleteness. Here, you get in-depth descriptions of all of the different kinds of questions in each section. Theres also a thorough overview of the major grammar rules and math principles on the exam. Similarly, the book gives a very complete explanation of content and strategy in ACT Reading and ACT Science. Still, Kaplanmuch like its competitor the Princeton Reviewsometimes lets its branding and sales tactics get in the way of its advice. Unfortunately, this update doesnt include the elimination of the SmartPoint system. Kaplans SmartPoint system lists each question type in every section as a SmartPoint. These SmartPoint labels can be confusing and inconsistent. Some SmartPoints are said to be related to other SmartPoints, but the connections are vague at best. Why, for example, is the Coordinate Geometry SmartPoint related only to Plane Geometry? With its equations and patterns, couldnt coordinate geometry also have connections to the Operations and Variable Manipulations SmartPoints? For that matter, the connections between coordinate geometry skills and plane geometry skills are never actually explained. Similar deficiencies are seen in Kaplans SmartPoints in ACT English, ACT Reading, and ACT Science. Then theres the use of the Kaplan Method for each section. The Kaplan Method has been updated for the ACT English section (it used to be bizarrely oversimplified; now, it at least makes sense). Sadly, this books Kaplan Methods for the other parts of the ACT are less-than stellar. The Kaplan Method for ACT Math requires students to dissect every detail of a math problem in far more depth than necessary. That being said, some of the other suggested ACT Math strategies are very good. Theres a lot of material on backsolving and picking numbers. These are both important ACT Math approaches, and this book covers them well. Then theres the Kaplan Method for ACT Reading. In the Kaplan Method, students must read the entire passage carefully before going to any of the questions. This is actually pretty bad advice for all but the fastest readers. Those who read at a normal pace should take a different approach. Most test takers should skim the passage and get to the questions quickly, or simply look at the questions first and scan for answers. Similarly, the Kaplan Method for ACT Science requires a time-consuming up-front reading of the texts and visuals. You really dont need to do this on the exam. And again, this approach can work against you. Kaplan also suggests you try to simply select the right ACT Reading answer based on logic, without paying attention to any answers that seem wrong to you. This is a very insufficient approach, and it can lead to mistakes as often as it leads to correct answers. The Kaplan Method for ACT Writing does one thing thats pretty awesomeit shows students how to brainstorm and write an outline. This is refreshing, since many ACT prep books dont cover prewriting sufficiently. Regrettably however, Kaplan again applies a flawed, time consuming method. The Kaplan Method for putting together an ACT essay includes a prescriptive, highly detailed outline structure that students will have trouble following within the test time limits. Practice Materials This is the weakest aspect of Kaplans ACT Premier. The practice materials all have pretty obvious flaws. Heres a quick rundown, section by section. ACT English ACT Reading Most of the questions in these sections are much easier than the ones on the real ACT. A handful of questions are harder than what youd see on the ACT, too. But such questions are difficult simply because of poor test design. The hard questions have multiple answers that could be right. You wont see these kinds of ambiguous choices in real ACT questions. ACT Math Math problems only have one possible answer, so you wont see ambiguous hard questions in Kaplans ACT Math. But you do still see lots of easy questionsa much easier mix compared to the actual exam. ACT Science Here, both the questions and the texts are simpler than theyd be on the exam. The graphs and tables are simpler on average as well. ACT Writing Kaplans corrected some of the over-detailed prompts that plagued previous versions of this (um, Kaplan ACT) books. These are a lot more solid than they were in previous editions. Grade Practice materials: C- Answer explanations, strategies, and skills: B FREE ACT Resources Magoosh’s ACT eBook That’s right! Magoosh has a free ACT eBook! What will you find in here? Strategies for the exam, practice questions, detailed explanations for those practice questions, explanations of the ACT format and details of all question types. It’s written by Magoosh’s test experts, meaning that it’s not dense or dry like some books. Even better, it’s available in a handy PDF so you can study on the go. Magoosh’s SAT Math Formula eBook (This eBook was written for the SAT, but is equally crucial for the ACT.) The math formulas you’ll need on the test, plus strategies and practice problems so you can learn how to use them under pressure! High Schooler’s Guide to the Future For this eBook, Magoosh teamed up with CollegeXpress to combine our test-prep expertise with their college admissions knowledge. This guide to getting into college provides a timeline to help you navigate the college prep process year-by-year. More Magoosh ACT Prep Book Reviews This list grows all the time, so be sure to check back for new reviews! (Or send us a request for one!) If youre interested in adding some online practice to your ACT Prep, complete with videos and interactive tutorials, check out Magoosh ACT Prep. Happy studying!