The ACT Prep Kit · Checklist
01 · Weekly Rhythm
One week. Five sessions. Repeat.
Tape this to your wall. The whole Kit comes down to doing this loop until the test — 25 minutes a day, one real review on Sunday.
Monday — Friday
25-minute weekday session
0–5 min: Open yesterday's mistake log. Read the 2 misses aloud. Say the rule.
retrieval
5–20 min: Work 10–15 timed problems from your weakest area. Try first — AI second.
drill
20–25 min: Log new misses. Tag each one: CONTENT / CARELESS / TIMING.
capture
Sunday review
90 minutes · the only one that compounds
Update your "Wrong Answers" source in NotebookLM. Add the week's captured misses.
Regenerate your Mind Map. Compare to last week. Which branch is shrinking?
Run the Brief Audio Overview on your top 3 weak patterns. Listen on your phone while folding laundry.
Take one timed section under strict conditions. Score it. Add new misses to log.
Ask Claude: build me a 5-day plan targeting this week's top 3 patterns. Print it. Tape to wall.
The whole secret of this Kit
The diagnosis is the AI's job. The retrieval is yours. Letting the AI explain a miss is gold. Letting AI do the thinking is rot.
The ACT Prep Kit · Checklist
02 · The 6 Traps
Name the trap. Stop falling for it.
Every ACT question is engineered to make at least one of these look right. Once you can name it — “that’s the partial-solve trap” — you stop fooling yourself.
01
Eye-candy answer
The longest, fanciest-sounding choice. Usually English. Almost always wrong on rhetoric / grammar — the ACT rewards concision.
02
Partial-solve
You solved for x. The question asked for 2x+1. Math's most common trap. Always re-read the last line of the prompt before bubbling.
03
Off-by-one decimal
Answer is 0.0042; the trap is 0.042 or 0.00042. Watch units. Watch placeholder zeros. Slow down on Math units questions.
04
Inverted relationship
Science. Chart shows X increases with Y; one answer says X decreases as Y increases. Easy miss under time pressure. Always check direction.
05
Right answer, wrong Q
Reading. The choice is factually correct per the passage — but doesn't answer the question being asked. Re-read the question stem.
06
Half-truth in Reading
First half of the answer is correct; second half slips in something the passage didn't say. The trap is to stop reading after the part that sounded right.
English POE order — drill into muscle memory
1. Try OMIT first (if available). ~30% of punctuation/rhetoric questions = OMIT.
2. Try NO CHANGE second. Don't change something already right.
3. Narrow remaining choices by what's different between them — not by re-reading both.
The ACT Prep Kit · Checklist
03 · Test Week Countdown
The last seven days. Confidence, not content.
The week before the test isn’t for new content. Each day has one job. Resist the urge to cram — students who cram their worst section the last week walk in anxious.
Day-by-day
Day 7Sunday
Final full timed practice test — same time of morning as real test. Score it. Log mistakes.
Day 6
Review the full test — especially the questions you got right. Confidence-build.
Day 5
One 25-min session on your strongest section. End the day winning.
Day 4
One 25-min session reviewing top 3 patterns from your error log.
Day 3
Light work only. Reread your English grammar reference sheet.
Day 2
No content work. Pack your bag (see page 4). Review logistics. Bed early.
Day 1night before
Phone away by 9 pm. Sleep. Do not study.
Pack the night before
Admission ticket (printed)
3+ sharpened #2 pencils + erasers
Approved calculator (TI-84 or equivalent)
Snack + water for the break
Phone OFF (proctors check)
The ACT Prep Kit · Checklist
04 · Test Morning
Test morning. You already know what you know.
No new content. Just one warm look at the rule you most recently nailed. Then walk in.
Morning of
Wake at the same time you've practiced for 2+ weeks.
Protein-heavy breakfast + slow carbs. Eggs + toast. Oatmeal + peanut butter. Nothing new.
Arrive 30 minutes early. Built-in buffer for traffic, parking, ID check.
One last glance at your grammar sheet. Not the whole thing — the rule you most recently nailed.
Box breathing 4-4-4-4 × 4 cycles in the parking lot. 64 seconds. Down-regulates cortisol.
Per-section pacing · the numbers
English
45 min
50 Q · 54 sec/Q
Math
50 min
45 Q · 67 sec/Q
Reading
40 min
36 Q · 67 sec/Q
Science
40 min
40 Q · 60 sec/Q
During the test
Bubble in chunks of 5 — not per question. Saves ~90 seconds per section.
A question eats 25 seconds past your average? Circle, guess (your letter, always the same), move.
One minute left + 5+ blank? Fill them all with the same letter. Never leave blank.
At the break: eat, walk, don't talk about the last section.
One section will feel like you bombed. Everyone gets one. It's almost never your worst. Keep moving.
If you blank on Q1
Skip it. Bubble C. Do questions 2–5 first. The brain warms up in the first 90 seconds — the test isn't fair to make Q1 also be the threshold. Most students can do 2–5 cold and return to Q1 as a free win.