SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

Laura Staffaroni

Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school.

Recent Posts

Should You Go to a Women's College?

Many people are familiar with the idea of all-girls' schools for elementary, middle, and high school, but did you know there are also women-only colleges?

In this article, we discuss what women's colleges are and why you'd want to apply to them. We'll also go over the top 17 women's colleges in the US and explain why these schools made the cut.

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Best Abigail Williams Analysis - The Crucible

In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Abigail Williams is the pebble that gets the avalanche of the Salem witch trials started. It is Abigail who first says Tituba has been using supernatural powers to corrupt her and Betty, and it is Abigail who jumps on the (metaphorical) accusation train after Tituba has been coerced into confessing her involvement and naming co-conspirators.

In this guide, we'll go over Abigail's entire sphere of influence, from her role as the lead accuser in the witch trials to the relationship between Abigail and John Proctor, and discuss what drives Abigail to act as she does throughout the course of the play.

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The Ultimate Prep Guide to ACT Reading: Strategies, Tips, and Practice

This is the best study guide to ACT Reading out there.

No kidding, no exaggerating, and no doubt about it. We've read many ACT prep books, studied ACT, Inc’s resources, and taken the best aspects of each to combine into this magnificent patchwork quilt of a guide. Each question type is covered in detail, organized not by how the questions are asked, but by the essential underlying skills the questions are testing. We cover the best ACT reading tips and strategies and how to get the most out of your ACT Reading practice and prep.

Looking for a comprehensive guide to ACT Reading and how to improve your ACT Reading score? Want to master the important concepts, grapple with practice questions from ACTual (I will probably never stop doing this) ACT Reading tests, and make sure you're taking the most away from questions you miss? This is the ACT study guide that will help you improve your ACT Reading score dramatically by focusing on all those areas (and more!).

I've divided this guide into three sections, based on level of information. We'll start with understanding the ACT Reading section at a high level, move on to the ACT reading test and the different question types therein (divided by the underlying skills that are tested), and end with study plans and how to maximize your study time for score improvement.

I suggest reading all of the articles below in order to start off, then using this guide as a reference page to come back to as you progress in your test prep.

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(Updated) ACT Essay Scoring: Completely Explained

It's finally that day you've circled on your calendar—the day when ACT essay scores are released. You log into ACTstudent and look at your essay score. There's an "8" for your overall Writing score as well as four different "domain" scores of 6, 8, 9, and 10. What does your ACT Writing score mean and how is your ACT essay scored? This article will shed some light on both of these things.

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How To Attack ACT Essay Prompts and Raise Your Score

The update to the ACT Writing test has many students confused about how best to prepare. With so much more information to read before you start writing, the ACT essay's got to be more complicated right? Nope, not necessarily. Join me as I journey deep into the land of ACT essay prompts.

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How Does ACT Essay Length Affect Your Score?

There's not a whole lot of information out there on how essay length affects ACT Writing scoring. Are longer essays better? But the essay scoring rubric doesn't say anything about essay length, so maybe it doesn't matter? Fear not—your questions will be answered in this article.

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Most Important Quotes From The Crucible, Analyzed

The Crucible is four acts of tight dialogue and economical action. It can be hard to pick out particular moments or quotes as being key since everything moves along so quickly. Never fear! I have your back with this complete guide to The Crucible quotes.

I'll go over the most important quotes from The Crucible, explaining both their literal meaning and why they're important. For clarity, the quotes are grouped into four themes: irony, fear and hysteria, pride and reputation, and power and authority. Each section also includes additional quotes that fall under the same general theme for you to practice analyzing on your own.

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105 Creative Writing Prompts to Try Out

The most common advice out there for being a writer is, "if you want to write, write." While this is true (and good advice), it's not always that easy, particularly if you're not writing regularly.

Whether you're looking for help getting started on your next project, or just want to spend 20 minutes being creative, writing prompts are great ways to rev up your imagination. Read on for our list of over 100 creative writing prompts!

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ACT Writing Tips: 15 Strategies to Raise Your Essay Score

Whether you've never thought about ACT Writing strategies or have worked hard on the ACT essay, you can benefit from knowing more: about the essay itself, and what really matters when the graders are reading your essay.

In this article, we offer a number of ACT Writing tips as well as a foolproof template for putting them into practice.

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ACT Essay Format and Templates You Can Use

Most of the ACT is entirely multiple choice. All you have to worry about when answering the questions is that you're filling in the correct answer bubble!

But then there's that (optional) Writing section, which requires you to give your answer in words. How are you supposed to write a persuasive essay in 40 minutes? What format should your essay have? Is there an ACT essay template that can guarantee you a high score? We'll answer these questions in this article.

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How to Get a Perfect 12 on the ACT Writing Essay

There is no part of the ACT more mysterious to students than the essay, and very few people seem to know what exactly the ACT is looking for in a "perfect" essay (particularly since September 2015 was the new ACT Writing test's debut). Luckily, we've got the expertise to give you some insight into how the essay works and what you can do to push your score those extra few points up the scale.

Whether you're trying to impress your dream school or just want to boost your ACT score, the essay is a great thing to work on. Some of the tips below stand alone, while others are part of larger categories that have been assembled based our ACT expertise.

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ACT Writing Rubric: Full Analysis and Essay Strategies

What time is it? It's essay time! In this article, I'm going to get into the details of the newly transformed ACT Writing by discussing the ACT essay rubric and how the essay is graded based on that. You'll learn what each item on the rubric means for your essay writing and what you need to do to meet those requirements.

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How to Write an ACT Essay: Step-by-Step Example

Sometimes writing—especially writing for standardized tests—can feel like something you "get" or "don't get." That's primarily because it's very difficult to explain and teach writing in a mechanical way, especially when you're up against time limits.

In this article, we've broken how to write the ACT essay into eight steps that work for every essay, every time. Then, we show you exactly how to do it with an actual ACT essay example.

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Vertex Form: What Is It? How Do You Calculate It?

Once you have the quadratic formula and the basics of quadratic equations down cold, it's time for the next level of your relationship with parabolas: learning about their vertex form.

Read on to learn more about the parabola vertex form and how to convert a quadratic equation from standard form to vertex form.

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What Should I Go to College For?

Applying to colleges is a rough enough process on its own. If you're interested in a lot of different subjects that don't necessarily mesh nicely together into one major, then figuring out what you should go to school for can seem like an impassable obstacle on the road to figuring out where to apply to.

In this article, I'll take you through the same steps I (someone with multiple different interests) took back when I was looking at colleges to figure out what I should go to college for.

I'll also go through how, as a well-rounded student, you can narrow down what kinds of schools you should apply to.

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