Click the "look inside" feature above to browse the Black Book and get a feel for how it approaches the ACT!Current ACT Prep for 2020, 2021, and beyond.
The fully up-to-date ACT Prep Black Book, Second Edition gives you unique, effective ACT strategies from Mike Barrett, an ACT tutor with clients all over the globe who pay him hundreds of dollars an hour for phone tutoring. In addition to extensive and effective training on every aspect of the ACT, the ACT Prep Black Book gives you detailed, systematic, easy-to-follow walkthroughs for 3 official practice tests from The Official ACT Prep Guide. The Black Book is a must-have in your ACT preparation, whether you need
- a perfect 36 to be competitive at an Ivy,
- a 10 in each section to claim a sports scholarship,
- or anything in between.
The Black Book works best when used with the authentic ACT questions in the "Red Book," which is The Official ACT Prep Guide by ACT, Inc. The Black Book shows you how to beat the ACT, while the Red Book gives you real ACT questions to practice with. (The ACT Prep Black Book has no affiliation with ACT, Inc.)
The Black Book and the Red Book are all you need to get your best possible ACT score. The Black Book is the ideal ACT book for 3 major reasons:
- It covers every aspect of the test with advice that actually works, making it unique in the ACT prep field. It doesn't just review material from your high school classes! Instead, you'll learn to exploit design flaws in the ACT, using its own "ACT tricks" against it.
- The Black Book contains 600+ detailed, systematic, easy-to-follow walkthroughs for real ACT questions from the Red Book, so you know that what you're learning actually works. You'll see every question from 3 official ACT Practice Tests attacked in a way that clearly demonstrates the ideal thought process on the ACT. (You'll need your own copies of those 3 real ACT practice tests. They appear in The Official ACT Prep Guide 2016-2017, 2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020. Two of the three tests appear in The Official ACT Prep Guide, 2020-2021.
- The Black Book is a clear, concise roadmap to the ACT. (See the selected highlights below). It explains exactly how every ACT question works, and how to beat it in the least time possible.
Selected Highlights from the ACT Prep Black Book:
- The important differences between the ACT and a normal high school test, and how they influence every aspect of the proper approach to ACT preparation…
- Why every ACT question can only have one valid answer, no matter how much it might seem otherwise sometimes…
- How to look at ACT questions the same way ACT, Inc. does when it writes them…
- Why it’s so important to work with real test questions from ACT, Inc.…and why you shouldn’t pay much attention to the official written explanations for those questions…
- What you’re actually supposed to do when the ACT asks you about an author’s attitude…
- The important implications of viewing time as an investment on test day…
- Why focusing on the wrong answers can be just as important as finding the right one…and how to do it effectively…
- The simple formula that allows you to crank out a top-scoring essay (that is, if you even need to take the ACT Writing test in the first place)…
- The special grammatical rules tested on the ACT English section—which may differ from what’s commonly accepted in a high school or college classroom…
- The unwritten rules for every kind of ACT question…
- The many ways to approach an ACT Math question, and which ones are likely to work best for you…
- Why every real ACT Math question can potentially be answered in under 30 seconds…
- And much, much more than we can fit in this space…
