Your Comprehensive Guide to the ACT
Science
It's SO much easier than it looks, trust me.
The Science section might be the one section that causes the most apprehension and confusion among students. What is it? What's on it? Have I taken enough science classes to do well on it?
The reality is that this section has virtually nothing to do with actual science knowledge and this section is really, very, truly easy. This section should simply be called the common sense section. All it tests is whether you can recognize patterns in graphs and tables, see how one variable changes as another does, and some basic reading comprehension abilities masked inside of a science passage.
Increase/Decrease
A good plurality of the Science section is composed of what I call Increase/Decrease questions. Essentially, they can be formulated like this: as X goes up (or down, as the case may be), what happens to Y? Or perhaps, as X goes either up or down, what other variable goes up? Or perhaps they don't give you the second variable, and simply as "what else happens?" Questions will either ask this outright, or a question will require you to know this in order to answer the question.
Chart/Graph Analysis
Another major chunk of questions will be based primarily on your ability to analyze graphs and charts. These questions are easy, they simply are made to sound difficult. One of a few different tactics they use is to give you too much information. If you know this and simply understand that when they give you one point on one axis and ask for a point on another axis, all you need to do is trace up and over, or over and down, or whatever the case may be. A harder version might be to ask for one point on one axis of one graph, and ask for a point on an axis of another graph. In that case, there are also easily followed instructions to the right answer. It's simply a matter of being able to recognize the question and the simple steps to follow to the answer. This is true of almost every type of question on the exam.